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Since we’ve entered Darjeeling district, things have been different. Women actually work in restaurants. People look more East Asian. We’re coming in to country occupied by the famous Gurkha’s, whose discipline and bravery led to their famous utilization by the Imperial British as a fighting force.

As our lunch host described two days ago, people are sick of the corruption of the Communist Party-Marxist, which has won elections in West Bengal for over 30 years. The Gorkha, ethnically Nepali people who inhabit Darjeeling district, are prepared to do something about it. They have been rallying for some time to become independent from West Bengal and form their own state within India, similar to Sikkom, just to the north.

Just as we were sitting down to lunch, the police in Siligury, the main city to the south, were breaking up a pro-Gorkha-land demonstration going on there. It seems individuals acting independently of demonstrating Gorkhas started throwing rocks at the police, who responded with violence. In the end, more than a dozen people were injured. By the time we finished lunch, a general strike and blockade had been declared throughout Darjeeling district.

We had to ease our bikes past jeeps that were parked blocking the roads. No one obstructed us, but when we finally arrived in Darjeeling town, we found everything closed. Luckily, our hotel was serving food, but otherwise all shops save druggists were closed.

The next day, people took to the streets. A huge line of women snaked up the road past our hotel, chanting “We want Gorkha land, we want justice!”. They were followed by an even bigger and louder crowd of men.

The following day, we were relieved to see the shops open, but it turned out to be the student’s day to protest. The streets were filled with girls in pleated skirts and boys in matching ties and suit-jackets with the stereotypical breast patch indicating their school. They chanted and marched with a bit less discipline than their elders had the previous day.

Strikes are a common occurrence in India. I personally don’t know enough about this particular situation to take a side, though my sympathies tend more towards self-determination. For now I will be happy to have witnessed a common cultural phenomenon, peacefully expressed political views, and perhaps a bit of history in the making.

Shabnam Ramswamy is a middle-aged woman whose constant restless energy belie her real age. She speaks the fluent English of the Indian upper-class, but has chosen a lifestyle not in keeping with her caste. She moved back to her native village and works tirelessly, not on creating wealth for herslef, but on improving the quality of life in her village.

Shabnam Ramswamy.  “Of course, I am very photogenic,” she said when I asked to take this picture.

Jalgriti school, an independent, English medium, co-ed school that rises majestically right off the road from Kuli is Street Survivors India’s (Shabnam’s organization) most obvious effort at improving life in the village. However, other programs include fair trade quilting for women and workshops and other educational opportunities for villagers.

Jalgriti school.

Starting the organization and forging a toe-hold in a rural India deeply seated in the past wasn’t easy, and it is largely only due to Shabnam’s stubborn personality that she has stayed with her projects. An attempt on her life soon after her return didn’t phase her. When her husband tragically died of a heart attack before the school opened, she decided to see the project through to the end.

After the concert FBR played at Street Survivor’s Katna headquarters, Shabnam overheard some men wondering at the wealth of the U.S. as expressed in citizens like us who were able to travel so far for so long.  “What makes their country different from ours?” pondered one.  Shabnam broke in, “They are prosperous because they educate their girls!”   She went on to explain in her emphatic manner how a country cannot be great with half its population uneducated.

Change doesn’t come quickly in rural India.  Shabnam acknowledges that her project may seem bizarre and over-ambitious in the eyes of some.  FBR can certainly relate, so we weren’t offended when she told us: “You are crazy people cycling.  We are crazy people tucked away here.  So it was good we could get together.”

Quilt made by one of the participants in Shabnam’s fair-trade program, meant to bring work to villagers otherwise idle.

 One night we came back to find a huge feast waiting for us. As Shabnam explained later, she had to cook as a girl.  She was inspired by Tom Sawyer’s effort to transform white-washing into a fun activity, so she immersed herself in the task until she was able to thoroughly enjoy the fruits of her labor.  The results of her effort provided the best food we had yet consumed in India.

Careful followers of Mark Twain may be confused.  Tom Sawyer didn’t actually convince himself to enjoy white-washing.  Instead, he tricked his friends into thinking it was fun, thereby not only escaping the irksome task but forcing his friends to pay for the ‘pleasure’ of whitewashing.

It speaks to Shabnam’s power for positive transformation that she took Sawyer’s example of deception and was inspired to create good reality.  Not just good, in fact, but delicious.  We can only hope more people follow her example of bringing their talents to actually improve the lot of the rural poor everywhere.

How we came to be there

I had the great fortune to be acquainted with the much-esteemed Brian Heilman while at St. John’s. Having fallen in love with India (if not an Indian woman, yet) he was sponsored by the American India Foundation to work in India for a year with a grass roots organization, Street Survivors India.

As he was located in a small village just north of Kolkata, and as I had a standing invitation to his home, we decided to drop by. We were enthusiastically welcomed by both he and the leader of his organization, a woman named Shabnam, another volunteer, Maria, and all the village people of Katna.

Concert!

Not only did we find ourselves with a room and an outstanding dinner and a few free lunches, but Shabnam actually scheduled us to play a concert for the village. Tarps were spread on the ground and Christmas lights draped from the trees. We even had a couple of microphones.

Several dozen minutes after we were scheduled to play (”Indian time” explained Brian) the courtyard was crowded with children and sari and shalwar kamiz-clad woman while men in tank tops and t-shirts lurked in the background. Brian started things off with a couple of solo numbers, and then with the help of Shabnam, FBR took the stage.

Our audience (the largest formal gathering we’ve played for), listened attentively and apparently appreciatively. They had never heard our style of music before, but with Chubnam’s translational help, we managed to keep everyone’s attention.

The audience.

All evening storm clouds had been rushing in and a stiff wind sent the Christmas lights swinging in the breeze.  After six songs, we wrapped it up and let everyone get home before the weather broke.

A Village tour 

One evening Brian and Matiur, the Bengali teacher at Jalgriti School and a great poet, took us on a tour of the village.  We were followed by a troop of rambunctious children.

 Matiur pointed out the government-run school.  Children show up in the morning and play games until noon when they are served lunch by the teacher.  Then they go home.  The free lunch program started by the Indian government has thus increased nutrition among children but reduced education levels.

Across India ration agents sell food at reduced prices to folks with low incomes.  However, many of them use their power to trade ration cards for bribes, thus misdirecting the cheap food away from where it is needed.  Riots erupted across rural India last year in protest of the corruption.

At the house of Katna’s ration agent, Matiur explained that instead of riots, Street Survivors India had led an effort to collect petitions against the ration agent, which induced the government to replace him and avoided violence.

When we arrived at Matuir’s house, we sat down for tea and biscuits.   He treated us to a reading of his poetry, composed in his elegant Bengali script, which was almost as beautiful to look at as it was to hear read.

Matuir explaining the subtleties of Bengali culture.

On the way back we stopped at another house and were served an impromptu dinner by our gracious host.  We then sprawled on mats in the courtyard, gazing up at the stars.

Our Hosts Again

For our entire stay in Katna, Brian acted as our translator, tour guide, baby sitter, orderer of food, bargainer, explainer of Bengali culture, finder of lost items, explicater of Hinduism, securer of succor and even roommate, for a while.  Brian wears Indian dress well and has even adopted the head bobble characteristic to that part of the world.  His commitment to the country shows in his reception by Indians and his encyclopedic knowledge of Indian affairs.  We were lucky to have such a host.

Brian!

We should also thank Maria for her help. She invited us into her classes and also answered no few questions.I am far from being sick of these people I’m traveling with, but the fresh perspectives added by Brian and Maria in our long conversations were appreciated by all of us.

Brian wrote a bit our stay. You can read his account about our stay and wish him a happy birthday on his blog.

Published in the Livingston Enterprise on March 25th, 2008.

Biker receives startling introduction to country on the mend

By Jim Durfey for the Livingston Enterprise

I leapt from my sleeping bag with an exclamation which, a decade earlier, would have sent my mother scrambling for a bar of soap. In my haste to extricate myself from the bag, I tangled myself in my mosquito net and nearly pulled it and my bike down on top of me.

This idyllic camping site, in a fallow field just south of Cambodia’s border with Laos, was not living up to its promise of providing a good night’s sleep. With the pain of the stinger or mandible or fang still throbbing in my leg, I inspected the injured site for swelling while carefully sorting through my sleeping bag, searching for the creature that had proven such an effective alarm clock.

Nearby villagers had brought us firewood and stoked the campfire just before bedtime. We crouched about the fire with them, communicating in gestures and the few words of each other’s language we knew. They made warning gestures at the woods, feigning scared faces. Then they pointed to the fire: salvation! We should keep the fire going all night long.

Later we speculated, would the fire guard against wild animals, thieves, or an angry spirit? As ’sophisticated’ Westerners, we found it hard to accept their trust in fire. With my flesh still stinging, however, I looked towards the smoking fire pit and wondered if their ideas had not been more advanced than I had given them credit for.

As late as the early 1970’s, Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, was known as the “Pearl of the Orient”. It was considered the most beautiful of all the South East Asian cities, and Cambodian schools offered bilingual education. While conflict embroiled Vietnam and Laos, Cambodia counted on a peaceful and prosperous future. However, the war in Vietnam soon spilled across the border, and the country suddenly found itself embroiled in conflict with its own communist insurgency, the Khmer Rouge.

When the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, they emptied it, and Cambodia’s status as a nation on its way to development ended. The new regime closed schools and executed monks, teachers, and anyone else with an education. In an attempt to return the economy to an agrarian one, they forced all citizens to evacuate the cities and live on strictly managed communal farms.

Some five years and three million deaths later, the Khmer Rouge no longer controlled Cambodia, but the damage had been done. Into the late 1980’s, political chaos reigned. Still today, Cambodia lags far behind the development potential it showed in the early 60’s.

While biking through northern Cambodia, we saw very few schools. The schools we did see often seemed to inculcate chaos more than provide the structure needed to impart basic knowledge. Students in white shirts and black trousers and skirts wandered aimlessly in perpetual recess. Later we learned that teachers, their salaries pathetically low, often waited until the afternoons to teach, when they held private lessons in their homes and charged additional admission.

My friends and I bike to gain a better understanding of the world. Mere observation aids understanding, but there’s nothing like interaction to bring you face to face with another culture. One of our tools of interaction is music. We haul a few instruments with us in a kiddy trailer we’ve dubbed “The Band Wagon”. Whoever has to pull the trailer for the day sweats more and enjoys the riding less. However, we play whenever possible, mostly to build connections with people through music, but also to justify the extra work involved with the instruments.

We decided stopping at schools we passed and requesting permission from the teacher to play would surely spread good will among the students and give us a better understanding of their lives. That’s how we came to stand one morning in a windowless wooden room that served as a school for some elementary school students in Stueng Treng province. Light filtering in from a doorway dimly illuminated the students, who sat attentively, but abuzz with whispers. The teacher gave them instructions in Khmer, and they were silent but giddy. They applauded after each of the several songs. Though they couldn’t understand most of the English lyrics, we biked away feeling as though we had at least made the day more interesting and perhaps given the students a different perspective on foreigners.

Despite its late start, Cambodia is now quickly rebuilding its infrastructure and social services, with much help from foreign aid. The mere presence of schools and students proves the progress Cambodia has made since the time of the Khmer Rouge. Thanks largely to tourism and new manufacturing jobs, the economy has grown quickly as of late.

So significant is the tourist industry in Cambodia that it is hard to ignore. Across the whole of South East Asia, in fact, I found tourists staring down at me from huge buses and inundating small-town guest houses. I never seemed to see them in temples when I visited, and rarely saw them at local places that offered the cheapest beer. Instead they stuck to the guest houses that play American music and have English menus.

What most foreigners don’t do, however, is sleep on the ground. Perhaps that’s because they’ve already heard about the ants. After I managed to extract the ant that had so rudely roused me, I went back to sleep. Four more times that night a different ant saw fit to protest my sleeping arrangement with a bite, and four more times I found myself leaping to my feet, more awake than I ever wanted to be. Perhaps the ants provided me with the same service our impromptu musical performances provided the students of Cambodia: spicing up a few hours of otherwise dull, but quite necessary time. I suppose I can only hope our aid was more enjoyable to receive and lent itself more to rebuilding than shock.

During the few days we spent in

The most marked change was certainly in the landscape.  Almost as soon as we crossed the Cambodian border, green fields with trees spread out around us.  This so completely contrasted with what we’d seen in Cambodia that I am rather at a loss to explain it.  Can deforestation really have such a drastic yet contained effect?

We found people constantly being helpful.  For dinner the first night, we needed water.  I stopped at the first spigot I saw (spigots having replaced hand-pump wells since the border) which happened to be attached to a fire station.  The firemen greeted us enthusiastically and not only urged us to fill our water bottles, but also entreated us to use their facilities for bathing. 

One fireman had a large pink scar running up most of his exposed arm.  He looked to be in his mid-forties, and had obviously been on the scene of many fires.  After showing me the hose and encouraging me not to be modest in my use of it to shower, he ran and grabbed a cloth and machine oil for Drew, who was cleaning up his chain.

The next day during breakfast we gorged ourselves on street food.  I purchased a pineapple and began skinning it with my small pocket knife.  A lady ran up to me holding a huge knife and a plate.  Expressing gratefulness with my features, I accepted the lent items and set about skinning the pineapple again.  However, the lady apparently saw only incompetence.  She grabbed the knife from me and proceeded to do the whole job herself, chiding me and demonstrating proper pineapple paring all the while.

During break that day, we stopped alongside a river and practiced jumping off a nearby dock.  A lady pedaled up out of nowhere and handed me a bag filled with fruit and bread snacks.  I tried not to take it, but she insisted. 

Of course the crowning act of kindness during our

Gretchen never complained.  Instead she was extremely gracious and welcoming.  She even went so far as to introduce us to her Thai friends and tolerated our excessive appetites for several meals.  From her apartment far from the cluttered, touristy downtown districts, we were able to grasp a quiet, residential side of  Bangkok otherwise unattainable.  Thanks Gretchen!

You may have noticed the line on our map departed from its usually furtive inching along and suddenly jumped a country and an ocean to land in India.  This represents Nakia’s path, one the rest of us will hopefully be following shortly. 

Speaking for myself, getting on a plane is the last thing I want to do.  However, in light of the situation, it may be the best option.  Myanmar, a country I long to bike through, has no open borders and large sections of the country are closed off to foreigners.  Others have traveled through it, but only as ‘guests’ of the various rebel groups operating in the areas not controlled by the government. Such travel is impractical for five people on bicycles, and probably would not involve much bike travel anyway.

Going back into China and around Tibet is the next best option.  However, we all don’t equally love mountains, and buying visas and climbing the Himalayas would cost significant dollars and time.  As a group, we decided it would be best to take the carbon emissions hit and book a flight. 

We are currently in Bangkok, staying with Gretchen, a super-hospitable Bennie, and preparing for India.  The three of us guys still hold out hope for finding a ship to take us (less trouble and fewer emissions) but chances of that happening are not great.  So don’t be surprised if you see another jump on the map from Bangkok to Kalkutta.  Hopefully our current and future biking will offset the carbon.

Published February 20th in The Livingston Enterprise 

Learning to not sweat money in Laos

For The Enterprise by Jim Durfey 

We set up camp far off the main road, behind a copse of trees.  In the afternoon light shadows lengthened into distorted reflections.  Pinks and oranges on the Western horizon slid slowly into the colorless light of dusk.  The moon did not rise.  Stars peeked out of the paling sky.  Darkness cloaked the fields and trees, unmolested by cities or even a single house.  As night came, the sky exploded in stars.  A huge meteor plunged through the atmosphere, so close I mistook it for a firework.  It burned brightly with a long tale until it broke into a few sparks and skipped into nothingness.

We had been in Laos for one week, and the natural environment continued to stun us.  Upon crossing the border with Vietnam, we entered old growth forests.  Through 2,500 miles of biking through two countries, we’d never seen anything like it.  Trees of incredible girth sprung up dozens of feet above the canopy.  Walking about their base required several moments.  When we stopped to explore the forest, we saw walls of tree trunks oozing up rock faces, forcing nubbins of stump and bark into every nook and cranny, searching for purchase.  Clear streams rushed crisply through untouched forests and under wooden bridges, which we crossed carefully.

In the seventies, during the Vietnam War, the U.S. dropped more bombs on Lao than had been dropped during the entirety of World War Two.  The bombing destroyed much of the infrastructure, and scattered fighting between political factions preceded poor economic policy.  As a result, Laos has only recently begun to develop, and lags significantly behind Vietnam and China.  Cities are few and far between, and electricity and running water remain luxuries for most Lao.

Instead of homes made of concrete and brick, most Lao homes are made of wood, and raised on stilts.  Woven grass roofs shelter the structures from summer monsoons.  We had biked so far south that we escaped the seasons.  While winter chilled Livingston, the temperature in Laos often hit eighty-five by mid-morning and kept climbing.  The huts past which we pedaled all had well-ventilated, un-walled areas for good reason.  From here, lounging villagers tossed the occasional Sabaidee (Lao for “Hello”) at us.  As I waxed nostalgic thinking of winter camping in the Absaroka’s, we biked through the steaming midday, drenched in sweat.  Villagers often followed their friendly “Hellos” with chuckles.  After a few days, we saw the mirth in our unreasonable zeal to bike in such heat.  Thenceforth, after noon we joined the villagers in the shade until the light softened in late afternoon.

Unlike the governments in China and Vietnam, the Lao communists never effectively suppressed religion.  Temples sparkle out of the countryside and towns all host several.  I sought shelter amongst the trees of one temple in Savannakhet, Laos’s second largest city.  A young monk wearing the bright-orange robes of Southeast Asian Buddhist monks approached me with quiet confidence.  Monk Aek, as he called himself, learned English by studying out of a book.  Smiling with the excitement of the intellectual curious, Monk Aek eagerly propelled our conversation when I ran out of questions.  “My village is countryside.  We have no money to go to school, so I become a monk,” he explained when I asked why he had joined the monastery.

Like many Lao families, Monk Aek’s parents could not afford to send him to school.  Convinced he wanted to learn nonetheless, he joined a temple near his home when he was 10.  Although Buddhist monks usually restrict their studies to scriptures, they have time and resources to study other subjects.  Consequently, joining a monastery as a novice remains a good and sometimes the only option available for boys who desire an education but cannot afford normal schools.

Many other people we met in Lao spoke English.  However, language still remained a challenge.  Because of the large distances between towns, we often bought dinners we could eat while camping.  I once purchased a string of mysterious packets wrapped in banana leaves.  Using gestures, I asked the vendor if the contents were edible.  Assured, I ate two of the packets at dinner.  They had an odd texture, but great flavor.  My more skeptical friends refrained from partaking until they had asked our host for the night.  “That’s raw pork,” he said, “you should cook it first.”

Whether they possess English skills or not, the Lao smile infectiously and make visitors feel welcome.  As we biked along, we became accustomed to the enthusiastic greetings of children.  Often, we heard choruses of voices, but could never see the callers.  Occasionally we would look everywhere, only to finally look up and find children perched in the upper boughs of a tree, waving wildly at us.  Often the most humbly attired children and the adults in the simplest houses proved most welcoming.

Despite their lack of material possessions, the Lao remain happy.  Perhaps because they are unaware of the joys of mortgages, car payments, power bills, and schedules, they see no reason not to smile in the face of their deprivation from these luxuries.

Money provides opportunity.  Monk Aek certainly appreciates this notion.  However, since so many people without it seem to be so happy, I begin to wonder if I value money too highly.  When I work in the states, I work every day, no matter how hot it is or how sick I am.  Lost hours mean lost money.  In Laos, if people are tired, if the weather is unsuitable, they’ll take a break.  If something interesting bikes down the road, they’ll take time to examine it.  Their focus is not nearly as myopic as mine.  Time lost at work means more time to spend in contemplation or with family.

When viewing the satisfied smiles of people without anything other than their health and their clean environment, it’s difficult to maintain that a house full of stuff that doesn’t give one any happiness was worth the work it took to get.  I have already lived an incredibly blessed life, full of opportunities of which most of the world’s people can only dream.  For the moment, I will appreciate what I do have: a great family, a view of the stars at night, and the ability to buy food that fills me and is cooked—most of the time.

We entered the AIDS hospice in Phnom Penh expecting to see people reduced to skeletons wheezing for their last breaths. Instead we were greeted with smiles and bows from people who sat or reclined on their beds, weary perhaps, but healthy-looking, less downtrodden by their disease and more grateful to have gotten a clean bed in the breezy, open hospice.

Ed, a jolly Mary Knoll priest who oversees Mary Knoll’s AIDS/HIV programs in Cambodia, explained that ever since the administration of anti-retrovirals (powerful anti-HIV drugs) the survival rate for people coming into the hospice has grown considerably. Currently almost all the residents living their are expected to make a tenable recovery and return to normal life. In fact most of the staff at the hospice were themselves former residents.

Thanks to Peter’s initial contact with Celina, a model world citizen and Mary Knoll volunteer in Phnom Penh, we were able to visit many Mary Knoll sites. The city of Phnom Penh itself burgeons with non-governmental organizations. Our association with Mary Knoll proved most fortunate, as the programs we visited gave us great insight into Cambodia’s struggle with development and the Mary Knoll volunteers and priests themselves could not have been more welcoming.

It so happened we arrived in Phnom Penh in time for birthday week at Mary Knoll. That is the week when birthdays are celebrated by the Mary Knoll community at the weekly Wednesday mass at the Mary Knoll house. FBR went in its entirety. I was excited to attend an English mass, but the company and food afterwards made us all feel right at home. My favorite part of the evening, however, came when the lights dimmed and two Sisters marched into the room with cake. Cake?! I struggled to control my urge to grab the whole thing and dash into the street to feast on cake by myself in the gutter.

After it was cut up I even lingered far away, lest I give my appetite for sweets away. Finally I allowed myself one piece, and discovered real ice cream accompanied the cake. I stood by the wall indulging in cake and ice cream that exceeded my wildest expectations. Then I noticed people getting seconds. I waited, and waited. Soon I became convinced seconds for me would not be an intolerable burden on my hosts’ hospitality. I grabbed a small seconds, but soon found myself being encouraged by a couple of Sisters to eat even more. Great Scott! After fourths everyone else had obviously lost interest in the cake, and the servers were eager to clear the table. I felt I had no choice but to help them out…

This trip has sometimes been a struggle. There is not always cake, and the ovens in which I can bake things are few and far between. One Mary Knoll site we visited, however, really made my struggle for decent dessert seem laughable.

Celina and Charlie (another priest) work with a project teaching deaf children how to sign. It is the only such operation in Cambodia. When they explained their work to me, I realized for the first time what it really means to be deaf.

When children or young adults arrive at their school, they are sometimes as old as twenty. For twenty years, these children have had no exposure to language and have been completely unable to communicate with anyone other than by gestures. Our written language, completely caught up with the spoken language, is of little help to them. Think of trying to learn French in the written form if you have no concept of what a language is to begin with.

Because of the lack of previous work with the deaf in Cambodia, the Mary Knoll program worked to develop a sign language for Cambodia. Language, whether spoken or not, is culturally dependent. Gestures and associations with action are just as if not more liable to take on cultural specific meaning, so of course it makes no sense to force everyone around the world to learn American or British sign language. Celina, for instance, can fluently sign in Cambodian, but only knows American sign language from some courses she took in college.

We climbed the steep stairs onto the second level to visit a classroom. The kids, all of them teenagers, smiled and squirmed nervously as we came in, just as you might expect in any Asian classroom. With Celina and Charlie translating, we had a quick question and answer session. Some kids stood shyly over their desks, but others, one girl in particular, signed question after question to Celina, often interrupting her signing to communicate directly with us in carefully chosen intuitive gestures we easily understood.

The warmth and intelligence I felt in the classroom, and indeed, all through the rest of the Mary Knoll projects and volunteers, made me glad to know that such organizations operate in the world. From the HIV sufferers given a new lease on life by the hospice, to the children given the gift of language by the school for the deaf, Mary Knoll improves the quality of life for many people, often those most neglected in most societies. Now, whenever I eat cake, I will think of Mary Knoll, and remember to be thankful.

As I reclined along the shore of the Mekong in the Cambodian town of Stung Treng, a young man of about 20 walked along the beach and strode right towards me.  He carried a 7-Up and claimed “I speak English little.”  He wasn’t kidding.  He asked me where I was from and promptly ran out of questions.  I tried to speak with him to help him practice his English, but he couldn’t understand anything.  Instead he flipped nervously through  a book called “Travel”, which had dialogues in English.

Determined to show him even more patience than had been shown me over the past few months while I tried using Vietnamese or Lao or Khmer, I reached for my phrasebook.  I flipped through it until I could construct the question: “Do you have a brother?” which I hoped would provide my young friend with a very useful groundwork for practicing English.  After posing a few more questions this way and helping him translate them into English, he picked up his book and read sentences from the chapter entitles “Love”.  I helped him with his pronunciation in English.  Then he read the sentences in Khmer and I repeated them, usually to the accompaniment of his guffaws and smothered chuckles, so able was my pronunciation able to send him on transports of hilarity.

We covered such useful phrases as “Please release me for I don’t love you any more” and “I have fallen in love with you”.  Having gotten enough English for one day, Mouse, which is how my friend gave his name to me, took his leave and climbed back up the bank.

Even though this was the biggest Cambodian town we had seen in nearly 100 kilometers, it was tiny.  I ran into Mouse several times over the course of the evening, but lacking a way to communicate, we usually just smiled and went on our merry ways.   A large part of his future will depend on learning English.  Everyone reading this in their native language should be thankful our futures are not so decidedly tied to a single factor.

The Cambodian roadside views continue to imitate a war zone. Blackened tree stumps and fallen trunks litter the wasteland that leads up to the edge of the forest. Often no crops or trees or anything else take the place of the forest. Why go to the trouble of hacking and burning? We hear some of the wood is sold to Vietnam. We speculate the burning has some religious significance. In the evenings locals often come to us and stoke our campfire, clasping their hands together and kowtowing in the Buddhist style of prayer.

In the soft afternoon light we stop at a plain hut raised several feet above the ground. Mr. Sre, a man in short blue sports shorts and a loose-fitting shirt climbs down the ladder to greet us. He bemusedly rolls a cigarette as Nakia and I, by motions and phrasebook phrases try to ask his permission to camp in his field.

He unconcernedly lights his thick stogy and speaks softly in Cambodian. As the strong smell of tobacco drifts over us, we think we’ve obtained his permission. “Thanks,”we say, being glad say something in Cambodian the pronunciation of which we are certain.

Later, as we set up camp in the field, the whole village comes to watch. A shirtless man speculates to his friend in the red-checkered head scarf as to the nature of my tent. A naked child jumps up and down excitedly as Nakia unloads her bike. The white flash of smiles illuminates the crowd. Laughter filters through the dry air.

Drew takes out the instruments. To the beat of “Steal My Kisses” he raised puffs of dust from the bone dry paddy . Pete bows out a quick melody on the Er-hu, then sets it down in favor of the drum. Mr. Sre, our landlord for the night, picks it up. Everyone wants to try to play the er-hu. But he actually does play it. With fingers positioned expertly on the strings, he slides out a fast, haunting Cambodian melody. How does a Cambodian peasant know how to play the er-hu? Unfortunately, we can’t ask.

After the crowd has retreated in the face of our cooking preparations, and after we’ve eaten our food and sip contentedly on Pete’s birthday beer, Mr. and Mrs. Sre come back. The proceed with a blaring radio and a headlamp. They let us toy with their radio. We are amazed. None of us have controlled a radio in months. We fondle it the way villagers often do our bikes and cameras and tools.

The Sre’s communicate with us intermittently. We try the phrase-book, but it takes us only so far. Mr. Sre lights another sulfurous cigarette, Mrs. Sre asks Nakia questions that evoke peals of laughter in the asking. We assure her none of us are dating, that Nakia has no kids, that she is not married. What other kinds of questions might generate such mirth?

All the excitement generates exhaustion in us. After the Sre’s take their wailing radio back to their home on stilts, we lie down to sleep, grateful for our hosts and the fact that you don’t always need language to communicate.