Prak’s World

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When I arrived at the International Airport in Phnom Penh, I had the choice of either taking a taxi into the city and to a hotel, which would cost six dollars, or a moto driver, that would cost two. In the latter case, I would ride behind the driver and without a helmet, weaving through whatever traffic might be offering up on my early afternoon arrival.

The moto driver’s name was Prak Vuthy, a pleasant and unassuming Cambodian of small stature, whose calling card with the Cambodian flag and a moto more or less like his new Honda 125, identified him as Driver #9. Below this were the words: “Your honest friend in Phnom Penh.” He also has a cell phone listed, as well as an e-mail address. The back of his card provided a list of sites within and outside the city that Prak would be happy to take you to. For a price, of course. Up to you, he said, when I asked how much to go here or there. It’s a phrase that always makes me instinctively say: No, how much? Always aware that this is a strategic way of putting it, for there is always a minimum in mind, and there is always the hope that there just might be an unexpected windfall.

Right away I took a liking to Prak, and I assumed, letting my instincts rule, that he was honest and not a man of innumerable scams. I liked the fact that he spoke and understood English well enough to preclude misunderstandings. To get matters straight and off on the right foot from the get-go, I told Prak that on a given day, assuming things went well our first day together, I’d tell him what I wanted to do, what time to pick me up and how much I’d pay him. Though I had been in Phnom Penh previously, I was largely guessing about what would be an appropriate and fair amount to pay, taking into account such factors as time spent with me, how far we went on his motorbike, and how long he’d have to wait while I was doing whatever I was doing.

The second time we were together I asked him to find us a nice restaurant with Cambodian food. He did indeed, a rather upscale place with long tables and pleasant waiters overlooking the Tonle Sap River. The food was outstanding, and so was the service. The only thing I felt bad about was that the bill for the meal proved to be considerably more than I’d agreed to give him for being with me more than six hours this day. Whether this was on his mind at some point I have no idea. Did he entertain the thought: Why not just give me the money for my meal and I’ll sit and watch you eat?

I would learn that Prak was born in 1975 in a province to the east of Phnom Penh, in a small village some thirty miles from the Vietnamese border. When he was about three and the terror of the Khmer Rouge was in full swing, his father became one of Cambodia’s million and a half victims. He had his throat cut because he was a teacher. Prak only has the vaguest memories of this horrible time in his personal life and in the life of the nation, a time when one in five Cambodians were tortured, shot, bludgeoned, had their throats slit, or starved to death, this before or after or in between being forced to evacuate all of the country’s cities, often on marches with baby in arms and all they could carry that lasted from a week to more than a month. Prak said that at certain times during the year villagers now have rituals where people take Khmer Rouge images and violently mutilate them. More exacting details were not forthcoming, and I was not about to get snoopy on an issue that was eating at me as much as anything had of late. I was reading Francois Bizot’s, riveting book, The Gate, an account of his three-months as a captive of the Khmer Rouge and the rending evacuation of Phnom Penh in April of 1975.

A couple of times Prak mentioned his family, and on the second time asked if I would like to meet his wife and young child and mother-in-law. I said I would love to. And so we went to his home. It proved to be an event to remember. One, as it happened, that came after motoring south of Penh some forty-five kilometers or so to a sanctuary for animals that have been taken from poachers. Or in some cases bought from villagers and city folk, principally those two species of gibbons found in Cambodia (Pileated and Yellow-cheeked crested; there are a total of eleven species in the genus Hylobates), because they become very difficult to handle when they reach the age of six.

The zoo behind us, we traveled through a mesmerizing countryside of deep red roads and temples in the jungle, school children walking the road, and a pretty young woman in yellow and brown sitting on the ground cutting cane for those with a sweet tooth.

Before long we came to the airport and shortly turned off the main highway onto a road that was all dirt, potholes and garbage of every known kind. Very like the slum fringe of narrow streets and alleyways and jerrybuilt and half-built houses that define all large and growing third world cities. In this case, streets where never far away are the narrow three and four story houses that belong to the Chinese, industrious people who never want to leave a doubt about who they are or how much money they are making.

We only spent a couple of hours at Prak’s home. But it was more than long enough to get that pinched feeling in the throat that reminds me just how lucky I and those around me really are. And here I wasn’t thinking about all my schooling, or the easy job or good money that I make. I was just thinking about the enormous two-storey house that I call home.

Prak’s home (and it isn’t his home as it turns out) is a two-storey block of unpainted cement that does not have as many square feet as my two-car garage. The front of the home is open to all the world, for taking up about two-thirds of the lower front face of the building is a small and old two-shelf glass case with items for sale: a dozen bars of soap, some toothpaste, shampoo, bottled water, tampons, a dozen cans of three kinds of beer and a similar number of soft drinks, and a few other household necessities and luxuries that neighbors need and buy one at a time.

On entering Prak’s home and bowing to acknowledge the courteous bows I received, I was offered one of those ubiquitous third world blue plastic chairs to sit in. This was to one side of the dirty glass case of dry goods for sale, and mere feet from a resident sister-in-law, a big boned, attractive woman with an engaging smile who sat on a mat on the floor, her eyes fixed on a small color TV that sat to my left and behind me. She was engrossed in a serialized romance, not unlike those to which so many American and European women are addicted.

To the right of the sister-in-law and lying on her side on a mat with a small pillow to slightly prop her head was Prak’s mother-in-law. She was sixty-five, I’d been told, and though Prak could not tell me precisely what her illness was, he had said it was serious. She was hooked up to a bottle of white fluid that had been fastened to the bare cement wall. The woman had gray hair closely cropped and, to my eyes, did not have the appearance of someone deathly ill or moving in that direction. But one can safely assume that anyone taking something intravenously is not in good health.

Sitting at the mother-in-law’s feet with her back propped against the raw cement wall, and barefoot (I could not help but take notice of her glistening green toenails) was Prak’s wife. She was five months pregnant, and visibly so. I was struck by her warm, even somewhat seductive, smile and large white teeth.

This downstairs front room, where the mother-in-law spends all of her days and nights, and I gather the sister-in-law and her absent and unemployed husband, is smaller and more cluttered than I’ve The TV, just above and behind my left shoulder, sat atop a table with a broken door notably scarred with crayons. To one side of the table were three large stacks of CDs, dusty and hard to identify. On the other side and beneath the TV was one of those wooden soft-drink containers, old and full of dirty Coke or Sprite bottles. Not far away, lying on the floor, was an elaborate Buddhist altar, with joss sticks and fresh fruit. This was the one genuinely attractive piece of furniture in the room.

On the TV side of the room was an entrance without a door. It led, I assumed, to a tiny kitchen, and stairs that went to the second story where Prak and his wife and their three-year old son slept; and perhaps others too. I say this because during my short stay two lively and attractive teenagers used the house as if it were home. Or so it seemed, watching them get ready for school and then back their bikes out of the narrow entrance to the kitchen where they had been parked. I guessed that these were the children of the resident sister and brother in law, who for lack of any assets and a job lived in the house along with Prak’s immediate family and the sick mother–in law.

So, as far as I could tell, and without getting overly inquisitive, there were eight people living in this home: one family of three with another one on the way, one family of four, and the sick mother, mother-in-law or grandmother, depending on one’s affectionate reference point.

Prak said that the house they occupied was worth $5,000 U. S. The land that the house sat one, land with neither garden nor backyard nor side yards, was also worth about the same amount. These are extraordinarily large amounts to someone like Prak, and nothing that he and his wife could afford. Or would be able to afford anytime in the foreseeable future.

The home and the land belonged to the mother-in-law. Prak pays for the water and the utilities, and the food for everyone. The only other addition to the household income comes from the sister-in-law’s sister who is married to an American and lives in Washington State. Some money comes occasionally, every couple of months, I was told.

By this time I had talked to several people in Phnom Penh and discovered that monthly wages for a range of occupations were between forty and sixty or seventy dollars a month. Forty or fifty if you’re a person who makes drinks in bars that charge foreigners a dollar seventy-five for a draught beer, seventy dollars if you’re a head cook with two or three helpers in a restaurant or hotel. And what about Prak? How much does he make?

He said that he only works at the airport, other than what he’s able to contract for on an individual basis with people like me. He has to pay three dollars a month to “park” his motorbike while waiting for planes to arrive. He works in a rotation system, which means that he often gets no more than one passenger a day to take into the city. And a one-way ride comes to two dollars, which has to cover his gas bill and maintenance. There are days, he said, when he makes nothing. The planes don’t come, or it’s raining and everyone takes a taxi. Bad weather, then, means no food and a painful squeeze, for those food and water and electrical bills must be paid. And then there are clothes and medicines and other incidentals that he or his sister-in-law must find money for.

On the ride back into the city and to this Internet Café where I am typing these very words, I could not help but think that the amount of money I had in my front pocket is probably more than Prak makes in an average month. An amount of money that I could easily spend in a day and would not, were I at home, think twice about. Such is the luck, one might say, of having been born on American or European or Australian soil. Not, unluckily, on Cambodian soil.

Seeing the locals in their homes can be quite humbling. I've not had the opportunity to visit Cambodians in their homes, but imagine that it is even more humbling than in Thailand.