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Global Urban Trek 2008
Cinderella GoodbyesJuly 20, 2008
We are leaving Cambodia next Thursday – I can't believe it.
I am trying to stay connected and make the most of the rest of our time here. After we returned from our team retreat, it was so fun to come home to our family. The kids, Linda and Nika, were really excited about seeing us again, but they forgot everyone's name except for mine, so now Traci, Diana and I are all "Bong Kim!"
I feel like I have finally mastered the art of the bucket shower and going to the scary bathroom in the dark. But now we are leaving! I hope that we will stay connected to this family. Socheata (our host sister) has email and it seems we have an open invitation to come back and stay with them again. I will especially miss our Swiss-family-Robinson-style house, waking up early to play with the baby and drinking Milo in the morning.
We have started the process of saying goodbye to the staff at Children at Risk also. Chan Leng is the person we work with who I feel most connected to. She is such a light; watching her with the kids in the slums makes me feel so much hope here.
She invited Traci, Diana and I over for lunch yesterday and we got to see her family (all sisters!) and her home. She is so hospitable – she had been planning lunch for two weeks and afterward invited us to paint our nails together.
Chan Leng's sister is a budding seamstress, and we tried on some of her amazing creations. I know it sounds silly, but I really felt so blessed, like we really have friends here. Everyone we have met on this trip has blessed us in different ways, but having this afternoon of just hanging out and being girly is going to be one of my favorite memories.
In the slum on Thursday, we were playing with the kids and it began to pour. For some reason, seeing them playing in the puddles hit harder than usual. It is so messed up that we are here to visit and they can't get out.
I realize now the ideas I have grown up with – a Cinderella story for the poor, a newsworthy success story of the hard-working ones who escape poverty – only serve to placate people like me, so that I don't have to face the fact that many hard working good people are stuck in this slum.
But at the same time, when I think too much about that as I look around at the crumbling infrastructure of the slum, all I do is waste time that I could spend playing with the kids. That has been an important realization, too. It's good to think critically, but at some point I have to stop feeling bad and simply start giving – especially of myself and of my time.
- Kim
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