We all know, from photos, movies, documentaries, what tin city means. Poverty, dirt, extremely difficult living conditions, disease, malnutrition, misery for children and adults, prostitution, crime...
I had visited slums in the past, in countries in Africa, Asia, Central America or the Indian Ocean, and I thought I understood what favela - tin town (bidonville in French) meant.
I was wrong after all.
Based in the city of Siem Reap, next to the impressive temples of the Angor Wat area I visited shantytowns by the Tonlé Sap lake.
The sight was beyond imagination. The stench is intense, persistent and varied. A mixture of sewer smells, rotten fish, rotting meat, dead animals, burnt wood, plastics and rubber. Strong stench changes everything and worsens what we could imagine by watching a photo or a documentary. It is the connection to reality.
Which seems surreal!
The mess is indescribable. No infrastructure, lack of drainage, polluted water falling into the river which smells heavy, the color of the water dark brown where children bathe and have fun full of joy, carelessness, smiles and squeals, women wash the family's clothes next to it and adults fish !
But the shock wasn't that, as I expected to find it anyway, but the contact with people.
In no mood to beautify—what to beautify, after all—I thought I would see immense misery, calamity, disappointment, and sorrow beside me. But to my great surprise I saw everywhere smiles on young and old.
Especially the smiling faces of the children were a life lesson. They are full of joy, as soon as they see a stranger they happily approach him. They were not begging. It has happened to me in other – underdeveloped as we call them – countries to be surrounded by dozens of little ones who know only one word "money, money"... By little ones who are crazy about taking pictures just like the adults. But the children I saw in the Cambodian shantytowns are constantly playing with bicycles, with fake balls and toys they make from wood or garbage.
Voices, laughter, squeals.. in the mad joy.
I never heard a baby cry (and I spent several hours with them), I never heard an adult fight. Everyone speaks calmly and quietly (typical of Asians in general). The game goes on late into the night all the time apparently due to lack of television and cell phones.
One family smilingly offered to show me the floor - where there was a rudimentary mattress or, alternatively, an old hammock - to host me for the night.
I felt parental affection for their children, not abandonment. In no way did I feel threatened, nor that prostitution was involved.
I don't know how hungry and suffering children and adults are. So say the statistics, and apparently so it will be.
That's why I was so surprised by the real smiles, the good mood and the endless laughter of the children. I'm not looking for explanations. I do not enter into the process of interpretations and analyses.
I stick to the observation and what the experiential experience made me feel.
A true life lesson from the little ones of Kampong Phluk.
YS. The only sad, really sad, beings, wandering around tired and miserable, were the dogs. I have never seen the sad look on an animal before.
*Photos: thecommonsense;