"MY HEART IS VERY TIRED"

Koh Kong Cambodia

Christmas Day

2006

It’s still early, but the dusty streets of Koh Kong are already jammed with ox carts and Honda Dreams. 

One Lexus SUV with tinted windows and a Royal Cambodian Armed Forces license plate parks in front of the bank, where a bored young man stands by the entrance with an AK-47.  A sign on the gate reads:

No Weapons Inside. 

Please Leave Your Weapons at the Door.

Ryan and I meander around the edge of the market trying to decide which restaurant stall looks the most sanitary.  A petite young woman in a jean jacket gets up from her breakfast and greets us in hesitant English. 

“Would you like to eat here?” she asks, and when we say yes she breaks into a wide smile. 

“I’m happy to find new friends on Christmas Day!”

Socheat works as a hairdresser at the market, in a small stall packed with dyes and whitening creams.  Her English is so good because she studied for three years at the New Life Center, a Christian school in Phnom Penh.  She’s nervous about talking with us, but exudes a shy sincerity that makes me want to learn more of her story. 

“The New Life Center has good teachers, good conversation and good books. My mother also teaches me sometimes.  She can speak English very well.  She works for CARE International.  There is a very big problem with HIV/AIDS in Koh Kong.”

“So you and your mother moved to Koh Kong from Phnom Penh.  Is the rest of your family still in the capital?” I ask.  

“My niece, yes, and my aunt…” Socheat starts to reply, but then chokes up. 

“My father, he died when I was a baby.” 

A couple of short sobs escape and her lips are quivering. 

“I’m sorry.  I never saw his face.  Pol Pot killed him.  I’m sorry.” 

She fingers the cross around her neck and recovers. 

“Would you like to meet my mother?  Our home is far from here but she would be happy to have guests on Christmas Day.” 

………..

Socheat has two bicycles waiting for us when we return to the market in the afternoon. 

“My home is in the next village,” she explains.  “Can you ride a bicycle?  I borrowed these from my friend.” 

“I love bicycles!” says Ryan, who once rode solo across Cuba.  He pedals off the curb and into traffic, pulls out his camera and shoots pictures over his shoulder, grinning. 

I like bicycles too, but riding out of town is, well, really scary.  Dogs and kids and Dreams and cows emerge from clouds of dust in all directions, barking, laughing, mooing and sounding horns.  I imagine myself crumpled into a bloody heap on the roadside, Ryan flagging down a car to take me to Thailand… 

Socheat pedals sedately through the pandemonium, riding straight and steady with her lips fixed in a wry smile.

We ride through the outskirts of town, past a hospital and an STD clinic, around a gated compound housing the Cambodian People’s Party headquarters and into the village of Smach Ngam.

Shirtless children stare from the doorway of a wooden shack. 

Chickens scrape in the dusty margins of the road.

Green mountains loom over dry fields.

Socheat turns down a dirt track and parks her bicycle under a banana tree in front of a small farmhouse. 

“This is my home,” she says.  “And this is my mother.”

Socheat’s Mom rocks in a black hammock strung between two posts of her elevated home, a tired woman staring across the border between middle and old age.  

“Welcome,” she says without getting up from the hammock. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet both of you.”

No wonder Socheat’s English is so good – her Mom speaks with steady fluency, peppering her sentences with the technical jargon and buzzwords favored by international aid organizations. 

“I got my doctorate in Chemistry at Pursat University, but during the time of the Khmer Rouge life was very difficult. 

"Now I’m an Adolescent Reproductive Health Consultant with CARE International.  Problem is, my contract finishes next month and I haven’t received a response to my application for a new position.”

“Someone in Phnom Penh is probably just sitting on the paperwork, but I have to prepare for the possibility that there will be no job for me next year. 

We’ve planted some vegetables.  Socheat saves money at the market.  My god-daughter helps in the fields.  She’s a Muslim, from a very poor family.”

“Very poor.”

Socheat goes into the house and comes out with a thick black folder.  Her Mom’s eyes brighten, and she rises from the hammock.

“Here – take a look,”  she says, taking the folder from her daughter with two hands and passing it to me.

The diploma from Pursat University is on the very top, yellow-gray with age but still crisp at the corners. Stacks of certificates lie underneath, proof of seminars attended, courses completed, positions held and targets met – the sum of a career that has led to a hammock under a small house in a dusty village. 

At the very bottom of the folder are photographs.

The skyline of a city taken through the window of a hotel room -

“Melbourne, Australia.  I went there for a CARE seminar.”

Young monks carrying a gleaming statue –

“I gave money to build a new temple in my hometown.  4000 dollars.” 

 “You’ve done so much,” I say. 

“Yes, yes,” she hurriedly replies. 

“But my life has been hard and I’m tired.  My heart is very, very tired. Now, I have nothing.  Only the farm. Look, go upstairs, look around. Nothing.”

“You have a wonderful daughter,” I say, and she fixes me with a stare that says:

‘Yes, but in Cambodia, sometimes that’s not enough.’

Before leaving, Socheat and her mother take us out to their farm, a plot of cleared land at the end of a sandy trail.  The soil is sandy too, chalky and gray.

Cut piles of scrub brush send wisps of smoke into the late afternoon air.  A few parched watermelon vines sprout from soft sandy furrows. 

Across the fence, a naked little boy wanders about an overgrown pasture, swatting at a skinny cow.

“Before there was a house in that field,” says Socheat. 

“HIV AIDS family.  Now the land is for sale for $5000.” 

That night I see a strangely simple commercial on TV. 30 seconds, 3 scenes.

Scene #1 -

A shot of an American $100 bill with a big red down arrow superimposed on top.

Scene #2

A white man in a suit sitting behind a desk.

Scene #3

BUY LAND!!!

BUY LAND!!!

BUY LAND!!!

Flashing in big letters, English and Khmer.

Scene #4

A phone number.

Read the Prelude

Read Notes From the Road

Read "Bat Country"