Everything Happens On The Street

Helen and Paul have a large piece of art in their living room titled Everything Happens On The Street. It's a photo of two young Cambodian boys on the street. I don't understand poverty in Asia.

We arrived in Singapore two Thursdays ago. Singapore is pretty crazy. It's just a big island-city-country filled with people from all over the world. It's quite a beautiful city, but extremely hot. Sweaty Singapore. The interesting thing about Singapore is everyone has a home. Apparently there's no such thing as homelessness.

It's been really nice to spend time with Will's parents. And it has been really fun to operate as a family unit. Hoff clan. I especially get a kick out of it when we're cruising around Singapore in a little bike posse. It's how we get around. We've been doing a lot of fun, yet simple things while we've been here. Riding bikes, swimming in the pool, enjoying different types of restaurants (Turkish, Mexican, Indian, etc), exploring.

Will, Thom, and I got the opportunity to spend 4 days in Siem Reap, Cambodia. This is home of the famous Angkor Wat temple, as well as many other famous ancient temples. We had a fantastic time!

The most interesting part about Cambodia for me (and the most challenging) were the street children and the way I battled with how to care for them, especially after being in Africa and being so comfortable and confident with how to do it there. My eyes were first opened to this on the first night. We were eating dinner at a hawkers and many children were trying to sell us postcards and bracelets. We didn't want them and continued, exhaustively, to say so. The children were very persistent and clever and continued to stand at our table and watch us eat. They then began asking us to buy them food. Not feeling comfortable saying no to this without knowing the children's situation, I eventually asked them were they slept. They looked startled and went very quiet. When I asked again, they took off around the corner and never came back. We came to realize later that these kids belonged to the women at the hawkers and that's just how the system worked.

It's really difficult being in an extremely poor and desperate place and knowing the culture and systems, but then going to a completely foreign place, with no understanding of the children, their poverty, and their stories. I really battled with this.

My next difficult encounter occurred much later that night. We were going back to our hostel late in the evening, around midnight, and a child literally jumped into my arms. He latched his legs around my waist and he wasn't letting go. He looked to be around 5 or 6 years old. He wanted me to buy him food. There were other children and Will and Thom were trying to communicate with them. Using our best investigatory skills that we learned in Africa, we found out the little guy lived very far away and couldn't just walk home. As Will is trying to talk to an older kid and convince him my little friend had to get home and we'd pay for a way to get him home, I stood by helplessly as an old granny walked up to me, quickly smacked the little boy a few times until he cried, then without words spoken, leave. Another young girl came and yelled a few words at him then walked away. I was completely lost, but my heart was aching. I've never felt so helpless and so lost. We just didn't know what to do. Will and Thom made the decision to just leave. I couldn't make that decision; my heart just hurt so much for him. Why was he out so late? Did he have parents? Is this a scam? I just didn't know what to think. I pried him off and we walked away feeling very heavy.

We talked later to the Canadian couple that owned our hostel. They said most of the children are scammers, especially in such a touristy city. They said some are authentic in their need, but they are very hard to find and it's very hard to figure out who they are. I wasn't convinced, though, that they had gone deep enough in the lives of these families for me to take full value of what they had to say. That sounds really harsh, but I know what it means to go deep and I know that you can't know unless you do.

I'm still trying to process this feeling. I know South Africa. I know the kids. I know their stories. I know how the government operates, how the culture operates. I know the messy history and how that affects the people today. I know the social problems, the roots of them. I don't know this place. And not knowing this place but watching the kids beg on the streets was one of the hardest things I have had to experience. Everything happens on the streets and I have no idea what that means.