I continue to get messages from other Peace Corps applicants who are waiting for their formal invitations to serve. Everyone asks the question - since our wait has been difficult - for our most current status. Each time I wish I could respond "It's a GO!" But not yet.
We continue to check with the placement officer about once a month. The last time we checked was at the beginning of November when she wrote back the following:
I wanted to just give you an update on the medical approvals I’ve requested. I sent for medical approval for the eight remaining programs to which you could serve as a couple for the 2012 year. I’ve gotten three negative responses back so far. We have given the remaining five programs a reminder to give us their responses soon. I will let you know as soon as I hear back from the remaining countries. Thank you for the amazing amount of patience you have exhibited in waiting for your placement. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will have some good news from the remaining five programs. Sincerely, (name not posted)
The issue again seems to be medical approval, but - from our perspective - it's difficult to understand what's holding the assignments up. But we've got to trust that the people in the field are more knowledgeable that we, and keep our fingers lightly crossed.
So how are we managing the wait? Our strategy is to continue to engage the placement officer by trying to keep our profiles in front of her. So I wrote back to her the following:
Thanks for this update. We are keeping our fingers crossed that at least one of the five remaining programs will accept us. It's been a long road, but I sincerely appreciate that you're pushing the portfolios out to prospective programs.
Our daughter returns home (permanently?) Monday after 3 1/2 years working in Cambodia, with her new, 9 month old baby. That's a great Turkey-day treat.
So that will keep our minds and bodies busy while we await the outcome of Peace Corps placement process.
In the meantime, I'm continuing to work on projects for our son's NGO, Human Translation. org. As you probably know, Northern Cambodia is really suffering from the flooding that occurred several months ago: Crops gone, roads lost, live stock decimated. My son has started a new relief fund, and we're managing the fund-raising. So far, we've raised about $25 K. He'll be returning to Siem Reap where his naturalized Cambodian NGO called Community Translation Organization (CTO), is trying to mount the relief effort. He'll be there during the month of December before returning to the states. The good news is that the 600 hectare reservoir significantly helped mitigate the flooding in the villages of Balangk where the organization is working. Unfortunately, two of the six canals that were dug from the reservoir collapsed during the flooding, but as the water recedes, they can be rebuilt by hand and there's a possibility that - with the right instruction - the villagers will be able to "dry farm" another crop of rice in the next few months. CTO has several grants from Australia Aid and the UN's work for food projects. So, with some more hard work, I think the villagers will make it through. But not unscathed. Part of the relief fund will be spent on restoring clean water and sanitation. It's a mess.
So, while we're waiting for PC's determination of a placement, we're relatively busy here. Judith is continuing to teach at a local college, and they've offered her another term, and I have financial work coming in too. So we're not sitting on our hands. Nonetheless, we're extremely hopeful that PC will find a place for us. We both feel that the skills we will learn will substantially help us achieve our own goals, and I'm confident that we have something to offer, where ever PC might send us.
Our health continues to be very good and our spirits could not be stronger. We both wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. And thank you for your work on our behalf.
Sincerely, Tom
So is this strategy working? Well, we still have no more news, but I did receive the following back from the placement officer last week:
Tom it is great to hear you are both keeping busy. I’m very glad you and your family are able to help with relief efforts in Cambodia. Your attached photo is a real eye-opening---I can almost imagine the difficulty of living in such a situation.Thank you for you the update. I will be in contact with new information as soon as I can.
And why are we continuing to push on Peace Corps placement when we have this other NGO to occupy us?
The answer is pretty simple: Peace Corps offers a chance to learn more, to do more, and to build our skills in this important area of service. At the same time, it's just one avenue of service. And if one avenue becomes blocked, it's important to us to seek others. It's like any job that needs doing: you persevere until you find the path that works. There's no romance about it. You just do it.
One of my favorite "old" movies that we recently watched was 1958 production of "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" with Ingrid Bergman. No doubt it seems terribly romantic - this woman applies to work as a missionary and is rejected over and over again. The missionary stuff doesn't attract me, but the real-life personage of Gladys Aylward is inspiring. She's somebody who wouldn't take "No" for an answer.
I have no inclination to be a missionary, but I do have a desire to make a difference in some of the places where I know my skills can be of use.
Meanwhile, we're settling in now with our daughter and her significant other and her baby, who have just returned from Cambodia after almost four years. Our son Tobias was here too, as well as our son Dagan with his two boys. It was the first time in a long time that we were all on the same continent, in the same country, in the same town, in the same house, at the same time. It was an overwhelming experience - chaotic, exhausting, and terrible fun. Who knows how many of these will be left to us?
We sat around the table, made a toast to our recently departed cat Gus, and drank a bottle of 1981 Robert Mondavi Cab Reserve that I'd been saving for a special occassion since the time I worked there. (And it was still drinkable after 30 years.) A good time was had by all, and it was a Thanksgiving to be remembered.
I've been working a lot with Tobias on developing the new Human Translation website, and my favorite part of it is the photo record of the Trav Kod water gate. There's several hundred photos up now in albums at www.humantranslation.org/media.html . Scroll down past the video, and you'll see the albums laid out. These photos were taken during and after the building of the dam.
Releasing the Protein
My favorite album, at the moment, is the last one that is entitled "Stocking Trav Kod Reservoir Ceremony" which occurred in July of last year. You'll see the reservoir, and the hundreds of locals who showed up to release fish and frogs into this reservoir. Click on the album picture, and you'll be walked through a slide show of the ceremony.
This was a great project that is still on-going. I'm hoping that Tobias will put up some news in the blog about what's going on at the offices of HT really soon. There's a lot of news, but I'm not at liberty to report it. (Mum is the word). But look at the About page (www.humantranslation.org/about.html) and click on the Partners link.
In June of 2008 I toured the rural community of Balang, Cambodia, inspecting a reservoir dam that had recently been constructed by Human Translation and Engineers Without Borders. As noon approached, the Buddhist monk who traveled with us, Mean So Meth, needed to eat as prescribed by his order, so we approached an elderly man who was shaping a timber under a tree with a hand adz. His name is Met Sin.
Met Sin stopped his work, greeted So Meth with a respectful prostration, laid out reed mats for us, and joined us with four of his grandchildren. When he learned that I was the father of the man he had come to know through Human Translation, he became curious. He inquired of my age and we discovered we were both approximately the same age. He inquired about my health, as he was obviously proud his own good health. He inquired about my grandchildren, as he was proudly supervising four of his own grandchildren. How many did he have? I asked. He couldn't say for certain.
My son sat beside me, acting as translator, as well as my wife – whom Met Sin respectfully ignored. His youngest grandchild looked to be about two – precisely the age of our own youngest grandchild – standing naked before us while his sister cleaned him off with the water from our water bottle.
I'd seen several hundred photos of Met Sin's grandchildren through the HT website, so I immediately felt attached to them in a special way: Beautiful children, each with a unique, individual curiosity.
As the monk finished his meal, he got out a piece of paper and began drawing on it, showing it show Met Sin. My son explained that the monk was demonstrating how voting worked because the historic second national election in Cambodia was coming up. Met Sin, my son explained, was illiterate and had never voted, and the concept of voting was new to him. His grandchildren listened and watched the exchange with intense attention.
Later I reflected on the parallels between our lives: our ages, our good health, our grandchildren, etc. We both lived in rural, agricultural communities of precisely the same size. He had been rice farming for subsistence in Balang while I had been working in the Napa Valley for wineries and grape growers. His children might have been my children; his grandchildren might have been my grandchildren; his small house might have been the same house where I had lived for the past 25 years.
Met Sin was even preparing to vote, as we in the U.S. were preparing to vote in our Presidential election.
But then I reflected on the differences between our histories: Met Sin had lived through Cambodian independence, the reign of the Khmer Rouge, the Killing Fields, the imprisonment of the entire population on forced labor communes, and the recent Civil War that had left his land riddled with land mines and unexploded munitions. And yet, when the Civil War was over, he had returned to his ancestral land at the side of this reservoir -- ruined and now rebuilt by Human Translation, EWB, and the community. He is a survivor.
In 2009 we returned to the Trav Kod Reservoir, and I'd hoped to see Met Sin again. He was away, working, but we met his wife who showed us the new fish pond where she was raising catfish - another community project sponsored by HT and it's local Community Translation organization. The little pond was a plastic-lined hole that had been dug beside their hut, and she proudly showed us how they fed the fish with the special fish food that HT had provided. It seemed like a small thing to my eyes -- a hole in the ground -- yet it's an important addition to their resources: A source of reliable protean. And if there is extra, they can sell the fish for cash.
The reservoir itself was full. The Army had improved the road and ox carts were crossing the water gate with loads of rice straw. Children slept in the carts on top of the straw as the caravan moved slowly towards the village. The previous year I'd seen ox carts carrying wood scavenged from the forests surrounding Kulen Mountain. At the time, I'd thought that the carts filled with wood was picturesque, until I realized how quickly the land was being denuded of forest. This site of the rice straw seemed like another small improvement: One that was less severe to the ecology.
I took this photo of the reservoir and one of the current HT team right before my camera's battery failed. HT had come a long way, and Met Sin's family had come a long way in a few short years.
When Tobias had first come home from Cambodia on his first trip -- committed to helping the community at Balang rebuild the reservoir -- I was as skeptical as the next person. But it had come together -- as it still is coming together -- and it makes me proud to know him and his work. Proud as a father, but also simply proud of another human being.
This Feb and March Judith and I will be returning to S.E. Asia, and I hope to be able to travel out again to meet Met Sin and see how his extended family is growing up. He's had the pleasure of seeing my family -- at least Arwen and Tobias -- mature these past six years. I want to see how his grandchildren are fairing too.
Kaing Guek Eav (Duch) is an assassin. He oversaw the detention, torture, cruel death of an estimated 14000 Khmer citizens. Today his sentence for the crimes he committed equates to less than one day for every 2 people he murdered.
Anyone who has visited the Tuol Sleng prison knows that this sentence is a travesty.
Tuol Sleng was originally a public school in Phnom Penh.
After the Khmer Rouge victory in April 1975 Duch and his men set up prisons throughout the capital including the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. As the party purges increased towards the end of the Democratic Kampuchea period, more and more people were brought to Duch, including many former colleagues including his predecessor at Tuol Sleng, In Lon. Throughout this period Duch built up a large archive of prison records, mug shots and extracted "confessions".
The routine was atrocious. Any person who fell under suspicion within Democratic Kampuchea was sent to Tuol Sleng. Suspicion was enough to send you there. Once at Tuol Sleng, you were photographed and sent through a serious of interrogations that always included torture. The purpose of these interrogations was to get more names of individuals who were suspicious. This included relations, children, acquaintances, anyone. If you survived the torture, you were taken out to a ditch, and a hoe was embedded in the back of your skull. Your body was thrown into a mass grave.
14000 people suffered through this routine.
How do you imagine the impact today? Think about these:
If you came under suspicion today, you would never see your family again.
You would be tortured daily until you gave up the names of every person you have ever known.
If you had a baby with you, it too would die.
Your parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins would be implicated.
You would end up providing these names in full knowledge that they would be following you to this end.
Eventually, the torture would overwhelm you and there would be nothing that you could recall.
Then you would be led out to a field where you would dig your own grave, be told to kneel down, and your end would come.
This morning, on the concrete step, beside the pots of plants and flowers that still await their turn with the gardener, there sits a small Cambodian lion. My son Tobias brought it home to us long ago on one of his trips, and at first I didn’t know what to make of it. It’s a curious gift – another curio to join the herd of wooden elephants and the other assemblages of bric-a-brac that inhabit our book shelves.
The lion is very crudely made of an indeterminate metal, somewhat greenish in color, and still black with the grime of a recent forging. It was forged in the shape of the Khmer lions that stand guard over the headwaters of the Siem Reap – a temple lion of the Khmer kings. Its a dog-like figure, with a narrow Khmer dog waist and a large Chinese-style head full of sharp stylized teeth, has a dragon-like ruff running down its spine to the tip of its curled, tufted tail.
When I first held it, I thought it might be made of bronze because of its heft. I thought all it needed was some metal polish brushed on with an old toothbrush to bring out the golden patina that I believed lay hidden beneath the grime. So I went to work on it, polishing and brushing, until my fingers turned an aching green. This lion is no bigger than a mouse in my hand but the grime was so deep and the forging so rough that I could only barely get the slightest glimmer out of the metal. And within a few days, that glimmer was gone again, lost in dark green oxidation. In the end, I gave up, and then sent it on a surreptitious journey across many different stations throughout the house: First it went to the fireplace mantle, then to the oak bookcase in my office, and then, several years ago, to the concrete step where it now guards the front door. How, precisely, it ended at the front stoop is mysterious to me. Perhaps Judith relocated it there, or maybe even Tobias or Arwen. But there it sits, guarding the door, and that’s where I found it this morning.
Meanwhile, my son Tobias has gone off to Cambodia again and again. At first he had gone on a lark, but as each trip ended, he came back a bit more somber. It disturbed me because I couldn’t understand what was changing him.
Then two years ago, just exactly at this time, we went to visit Cambodia where he and his sister Arwen are working. The town is Siem Reap, near the ancient Khmer capital of Angkor, and it was a trip filled with many awakening things.
Arwen took on the role of being our hostess, putting us up and helping us get our bearings. She even became our point person as we bartered in the markets: Too much, too much, she would say. Only two dollar, only two dollar, was the response. Somehow she knew that if she persisted, she’d strike the bargain right where she wanted it.
Meanwhile her brother Tobias – present but in the shadows of our conversations – came and went and came and went again. He was like a kind of ghost; a face remembered; a silent, thoughtful presence just beyond our reach.
Then, near the end of the time he was able to spend with us, he drove us out to the project where he had been working – a great dry basin where a trickle of water ran in the creek, and where two young boys were throwing a net to catch minnows for food.
It was here that I felt we had at last found him. His NGO was constructing a large concrete water gate to dam this creek and flood a reservoir, so that rice paddies could fill and flourish once again. But right now, where we stood inspecting this massive construction site, we were nowhere and in the heart of nothing, as the sun beat down on us on the dry red Cambodian soil, and the boys threw their torn and crudely patched net again and again into the shallow water. His cohort, the monk named Somet, covered himself with his crimson robe, to shade his shaved head from the heat. We looked about, took photos of this moonscape, and tried to imagine the place where we stood someday flooded with water. A water buffalo plied the reeds in the distance. The boys threw the net again. Nothing.
Later, he drove us to Somet’s wat, where there were the ruins of a Khmer monastery, and where stone lions once guarded the temples of the monks. But these lions had been tipped off their pedestals, and their wide mouths had been broken by the rifle butts of the Khmer Rouge years before. Then they dragged an artillery cannon up the rise, up the sacred steps of the monastery, and mounted it on the roof of one of the temples. The roof eventually collapsed, crumbling under the weight. So the canon had been dragged clear of the rubble and now stooped in the grass like yellow giraffe at a water hole, barrels pointing down, waiting for more nothing.
The temples were built in typical Khmer style: Small rectangular rooms called “libraries” connected by long enclosed corridors. Their roofs were made of carefully hewn stones that were tilted against one another to form triangular pyramids. The Khmer engineers had not yet discovered what we today call the Corinthian arch when these building were built. Now many of the libraries and corridors have collapsed and are merely blocks of stone piled through the forest.
In the gray-green jungle, brilliant red signs stuck on spindly poles displayed crude drawings of skull and crossbones to warn of the land mines that still riddled the paths.
The grass was alive beneath the leaves with termites, eating through the forest litter.
Tobias and I climbed down into one of the long ruined libraries of the Khmer monastery. The stones were fitted within a hair’s breath of one another, but the great window lintels had long ago cracked and were now held in place by giant wooden timbers, fourteen inches thick. It was a desperate attempt to save these ancient temples from final collapse, but this technique made the buildings look even more decrepit.
In this damp, cool shade beneath the ground, it struck me how far this solemn young man had come. I remembered how once years ago he had stood leaning against the door jam of my VW bus on a Halloween night half a world away, watching the full moon rise above the vineyards where we lived. Back then, it seemed that door jam was a threshold to his life, and he said “This is the last time I’ll see a full moon on Halloween here.” He was at that time 14. Now he was a full grown man, six feet six inches tall, skinny as a stork, living his life 10,000 miles away, in a haunted place a thousand years old, more frightening than any haunted house we might have imagined. It seemed truly an ancient place of the dead.
But it was the experience in the mine field that focused my attention that day, visiting the site where the CMAC crew was clearing canals that led from the dam. Tobias had driven us as far as he could along the rutted red sand road, through the stumps of brush and trees that had been leveled to the ground. The truck could go no farther because the ruts were deeper than the axel of his truck, and we had to climb out and walk the remaining mile: Tobias and Somet leading the way while Judith and Chai and I followed on the foot path. Along the path all plant life had been mercilessly cut down twenty feet on either side. Every 30 feet a concrete pillar documented that CMAC – the Cambodian Mine Action Committee – had swept for mines.
Eventually we came upon the CMAC crew: Ten men in blue uniforms, some standing beneath a makeshift blue tarpaulin roof strung between two enormous termite mounds. Others were sweeping the area ten yards ahead with metal detectors. They wore no protective clothing other than a plastic face shield. They were searching for anti-personnel mines and unexploded munitions – things they called UXOs for “unexploded ordinances”. I asked if they had found any. “Yes,” Chai said. “10 anti personnel mines and 14 UXOs.”
Where, I inquired. “Where we just came walking,” Chai replied. “Yesterday.”
This news seemed to silence Somet who, sitting down in a folding chair, looked blankly off into the scrubby jungle. Four years earlier, Tobias had asked him about mines in this area, but Somet had assured him there were none left. “No, no mines here! No mines here!” Now this CMAC crew had revealed the hidden truth: Had Tobias or his engineers strayed this way to clear the canals, they might have been maimed or killed. It was a thorn in his friendship with Tobias, though it was not clear if he had betrayed Tobias, or if Cambodia itself had betrayed them both.
But Tobias said nothing now, and took photos of the men, the termite hill, the cases of UXOs that had been found, and the map showing the crew’s progress. He looked pale, perhaps from the heat. And he looked solemn and wasted.
Somet, who called me Father and who called Judith Mother, said nothing more. He held my hand as we walked back through the mine field towards the truck. He held my hand tightly, like a child who was frightened, but who was pretending that he was being brave. He is 34 years old – the age of our oldest son Dagan – and had grown up in this place: Knew it like the back of his hand. Tobias – who led us now back through the mine field – was 27. He walked casually, almost sauntering, across the ruts in the road, talking with Chai.
When we arrived back at the truck Tobias made an announcement. “I have to turn the truck around, and in order to do that I have to leave the road here. So I want all of you to stand back 30 feet while I do this.”
But the mines have been cleared, we said. There’s no danger now.
“They have swept for anti-personnel mines and UXOs”, Tobias replied. “They didn’t sweep for anti-tank mines, so you’ll have to wait while I turn this around.”
And then it was that I awakened from the dream of Cambodia into the realities of the place.
It’s one thing to visit the rubble of an ancient nation as it struggles to right itself from its long history of civil war and to marvel at the changes that are taking place. It’s another thing to visit the ruins of Khmer kings and Hindu temples and Buddhist monasteries that lay deep in the bush and contemplate the enormity of history that permeates the place. And it’s still another to walk a mine field where men in blue delicately scour the earth of plants so they might pick out the detritus of war.
But to watch your own son navigate the ruts of a road – not knowing what lay beneath the crust of red dirt as the wheels of the truck spin and the engine roars – is a transcending experience that focuses your mind to the present.
“One time, they set off an anti-tank mine,” Tobias had told me. “It was an explosion I will never forget.”
Here, there was no telling what might happen in this moment. But this time, there was nothing. Tobias threw the truck into reverse, and then pulled it from its rut, out onto the embankment just within the concrete markers. And so we climbed back in, drove the long red road back through the villages, through the fields of saw grass so sharp it can cut one’s arm, as naked children waved to us “hello, goodbye”, and women pulled their bicycles to the side to let us by. We drove two hours back into the city of Siem Reap. And then on to the airport where we boarded our plane and flew 30 hours home, here, safe.
The small Khmer lion on my step now has a different place in my mind’s eye. I now guess of what it is made. I now know that the dark patina of green will never shine like gold and that the days of the Khmer kings are over. No. This lion came from Cambodia, and is made of melted brass artillery shell casings, re-forged in a small hot fire by the side of the road, poured into a hand-carved mold in the red sands along the Siem Reap, and sent to market for a tourist to buy.
My son Tobias bought it for me, and now it guards my home.
I'm not exactly certain how the world has skipped and jittered in such a way that these events happened. Sunday, our son Tobias was one of 49 individuals honored by his holiness, the Dalai Lama in San Francisco at a ceremony entitled "Unsung Heroes of Compassion." He was being recognized for his work in the organization that he started, called "Human Translation."
The last two days have seemed like one of those euphoria-induced highs from a previous decade: A massive positive flow of energy that seemed to wash down the hills of San Francisco into the bay. It was not merely the excitement, but an actual sense of positive energy that seemed to lift our spirits and perhaps affirm what it means to be human. So I will, as best I can, report from my perspective the event and the feelings that it inspired.
I met Tobias the evening before at the Ritz-Carlton, which is way up near the top of San Francisco. They had invited the honorees to arrive the day before the event to get to know one another. There were 49 honorees altogether, from all over the world: India, Alabama, Israel, Washington State, Zimbabwe, New Jersey, etc. It was truly a gathering of people from all over the world. And each honoree had been permitted to bring a guest, and Tobias permitted me to be that guest that night of orientation. We ate a buffet dinner and then mixed about. I met Jack Kornfeld from Spirit Rock, and lots of others, and Tobias had a look like the cat that had eaten the canary: He was clearly in his networking element. There were nuns from India, Tibetans, Chinese, English, Aussies, Americans, Canadians: All people that Dick Grace had encountered in his many travels. Tobias and I split up at about 8 and I drove home, while he stayed at the hotel in a kind of reverie of networking frenzy.
Judith and I came in the next morning for the ceremony itself while the event was still getting organized, and had a chance to revisit some old acquaintances who I did not expect to see there: Tim Mondavi and his daughters, and many others. All told, there were about a thousand people who had ponied up $500 to attend this event – something way beyond our means, but which we managed nonetheless.
The event was a sit-down luncheon in a humongous banquet hall. Peter Coyote was master of ceremonies (I kept asking Judith if we were in the middle of a NPR TV show about brain health), along with Isabelle Allende. Jack Kornfeld gave a wonderful talk about the nature of compassion, as understood by Buddhists, with some lovely anecdotes and stories, all told with humor and masterful nuances.
Tobias sat at our banquet table – one of the two tables seating his supporters from Human Translation – and once again he looked like the cat who had eaten the canary. Judith was all smiles, chatting and laughing. Food was okay, and I had a nice chat with the couple beside me. It seemed like we were in a sea of crazy people, all smiling and happy, and yakking away.
Then the Dalai Lama came in, walked through the room in that rambling gait that makes him look like a wise old Orangutan, greeting various people before arriving at the dais. He sat and talked a bit in response to two questions from the audience, and then there were three wonderful performances, one of which was by Justin, who had sung at the Human Translation fundraisers in the past. I had spoken with Justin before the event in the waiting room. He was so happy to be there, he just glowed. But he was very nervous. When his time for his singing began, the energy was ecstatic. His Holiness sat at the dais, and at one point seemed to be rocking to the music itself, as Justin sang "Old Man River". Then Justin was greeted by the Dalai Lama, after his wonderful performance and later he was still so nervous that he was shaking when I caught up with him. His singing was incredible: Indescribable. The energy was contagious. He had received a standing ovation.
Finally, each honoree was introduced to the Dalai Lama by Isabel Allende and Peter Coyote. A description of their projects was read as they came forward. Tobias, towering over His Holiness, bent low to receive a silk Khata (scarf). All of us at the HT table were beaming in incomprehensible joy for the recognition that he received.
That was pretty much describes the ceremony.
However, though this describes the event, it does not describe the level of energy that permeated that room. I think it was akin to a drug-induced euphoria, like psilocybin or something. Quite potent. The cynical nature of my general outlook had led me to anticipate a sense of vertigo. But, after speaking to many of the honorees the night before – hearing about their projects and their efforts – by the morning of the event it was clear that I had already checked my cynicism with my coat at the door.
These were honest-to-goodness bodhisattvas: People who were doing good deeds because their nature made them that way.
One little woman, from India, had opened an orphanage in Darsana where she takes in street urchins. She is, I swear, shorter than five feet tall, and her desire is to take all the pain of the world and exchange it for the happiness that she feels. That’s her desire. She exudes happiness – crazy happiness – while she takes care these 80 orphans. She and her husband, whom I also met, are child-like and sweet, managing as best they can – sort of like coming across Hansel and Gretel in the deep dark woods, before they meet the witch. They were just bubbling with happiness, and had just come off the plane after 30 hours of travel. “This is our first time” she kept saying, like a person who was on a first mescaline trip. Their energy was contagious.
Now imagine a room of fifty people like that, surrounded by a thousand supporters. All of them had this sort of contagious energy. A sort gathering of spiritual batteries, all getting recharged by the Dalai Lama, who sat at the dais and switched all our switches off and on, little verbal switches, and changed all the negative polarity to positive polarity like a master spiritual electrician: His high little voice rising and falling, then deepening, then suddenly laughing and making us all laugh. Then, quite suddenly, he said “That’s all! Good bye!” and up he got to leave, again wandering like an old Orangutan through the hall.
It was no wonder that Tobias looked so happy, to be among such a group of truly outrageous crazies. He fit right in.
Tearing him away from this festival of compassion was incredibly difficult. A couple of the members of his board of trustees, Linda Scheibal and Susan Shay and husbands and donors, wanted to have some personal time with him. So eventually I extracted him and we climbed even further up Knob Hill to the St. Francis Hotel where we opened a couple bottles of wine and sat around and talked.
Finally, it was about 6 and we wandered back to our cars – some people wanting to party on – and Judith and I came home. It was a wonderful event, far in excess of energy than I anticipated.
This is my report on the 2008 Fund Raiser for Human Translation. It was a great event, but not without its own little drama.
We got there about 4:30, and the event was supposed to begin at 5. The day was beautiful, clear sky, not too hot. We were still some of the first people to get there. It was at Clos Pegase Winery, and I'm including some pictures here so that you’ll see what it looked like.
The vineyards at the winery.
They had set up the tables, and the event was to be sold out. It’s a beautiful setting with wine caves dug into the hill behind the winery.
Tables set for supporters.
Judith and I scouted out the caves, and found Megan (Blaire’s sister) getting ready for the opera concert, along with the three other singers. The caves are not what one might normally picture in one’s mind: They are like Hobbit Holes built into the hills, plastered in stucco and painted, with little alcoves containing Grecco-Roman sculptures, and then barrels mounted on skids that can be moved about with forklift trucks. They’re about 20 feet wide and 20 feet tall, and they have a wonderful echo effect.
The wine caves.
Megan and her friends were dressed in formal attire and they all looked beautiful. The stage was at one end of one of the farthest caves with a grand piano, and was jammed with folding chairs. I wished the singers good luck, and thanked them for their support. I told them about the staff back in Cambodia, and how I wished you could attend to see their performances. They said they were proud to be a part of the fund raiser for Human Translation because they knew that what HT was doing was making a real importance to the families and artists and children of Cambodia.
The performers.
As people started to come into the caves, there was a mounting sense of excitement. Such a magical place to hold a concert! People had dressed up for the occasion, and came in holding glasses of champaign – also donated to HT’s fund raiser. It’s hard to imagine how many people have contributed to this event. Volunteers, donors, and just old valley friends – many of whom I had not seen in years, and some who – though I knew them by sight – I had never met. As Judith and I were separately introduced, we individually thanked as many as we could. But there were so many. Some asked if we were proud of Tobias, and I said “Of course!” But I also said that HT team was what was really important, back in Cambodia and here in St. Helena.
Megan and supporter of HT.
And then I told them a little about what I had seen in our recent trip. It’s hard for them to imagine Siem Reap and Balangk – especially in the opulent setting of the winery.
A child back in Balangk, Cambodia
But they listened, intent, and some said they’d been attracted to the event by the newspaper articles that had recently appeared, and some said they had heard of the event through word of mouth.
The concert was packed.
The concert cave was soon crammed with the audience, and each concert piece was introduced by Robin Shay – the son of Susan Shay who is a key board member, and Megan Scheibal’s boyfriend. The four singers each had a couple of solos and then a couple of duets and then a couple of foursome pieces. One performer, Justin, sang “Old Man River” with such beauty that we were all transfixed. (And this comes from a non-opera buff!) The concert ran for about an hour, with one brief intermission. The volunteers literally came out of the woodwork, as they leaned forward between the barrel racks to listen from the wings. It was a wonderful concert, too wonderful to really describe. The group received standing ovations, and were called back for encores. Wow! You have no idea how impressive these HT supporters were by donating their talents with this concert. They had flown in from New York City, 3000 miles, just to perform at this concert, for free.
The encore.
After the concert the audience made its way back out through the caves to the courtyard where each person was pre-assigned a seat. The tables were laid out beautifully with sparkling wine glasses and red tablecloths and lots of bottles of wine. The sun was just starting to set, and the air was starting to cool down. Everyone seemed ecstatic about the concert, and then the food was served.
The dinner.
The food had been donated and prepared by the master chef, Ron Golden. It was lovely, came in multiple courses, and was served family style. As I was sitting there watching the food being served, I was reminded of Metsin (or was it Mitsen) and the little lunch we had under the tree on the mats with Somet and Tobias and Chai.
Lunch beside the water gate with Somet and Met Sin and grandchildren.
The contrast was right up front for me, and I told some of the people at the table about that experience
After people had gotten through most of their meal, Phil (another HT board member) stepped up to the lectern with a mic and introduced Dick Grace. Dick is a local philanthropist who has been instrumental mentoring Tobias in the development of HT over the last four years. He had never given any money to HT in the first years, waiting to see if Tobias was serious, but last year he donated generously, leading the rest of the auction in that successful event. So having Dick talk about HT was important to this group because it showed them that he was still very much a supporter.
Dick Grace
Dick then introduced Tobias, who was dressed in slacks (thank god he wasn’t wearing those jeans) and a simple blue shirt. Tobias thanked everyone for coming, and thanked them for last year’s contribution, and congratulated them on supporting the successful building of the reservoir.
The water gate and the reservoir construction, thanks to HT supporters.
He told them that without their support none of what had been accomplished would have been possible. Then he talked about what needed to be done now: The installation of water filters, and the development of the educational program. It was a short talk, and he said that he had prepared a film to give them an idea of what the projects had been about and what was needed still. So the lights were dimmed as the night grew dark, and the wide screen TVs lit up.
Tobias introduces the video.
And then the technical glitches started. Oh my gawd! How to describe them!
Technology run amok.
As a background, Tobias later told me that they had spent lots of money to hire a professional company to bring in the audio-video equipment. But the crew had messed up, bringing the wrong equipment and not enough wide screen tvs. As the concert was going on, they were still trying to get things to work, and had been forced to go from Plan A, to Plan B, and finally to Plan C before they had things working. Now they were on Plan C, which was a back-up DVD that Tobias had burned the same morning with the final revisions. But then the AV crew had left! They had gone off without doing a complete run-through. And now Tobias and his volunteers were forced to do it by themselves.
The video started out just fine, and then it started to skip, echoing out a terrible screech as the feedback kicked in. They halted the video, and started it again, and once again the system crashed. Poor Tobias. He’d been working daily on this video for the entire two or three weeks since he’d been home, working as long as 10 hours a day uploading, and cataloging, and editing the hundreds of hours of video he’d taken back at the project. He finally halted the video and tried to speak to the audience, to recover the moment. But then the microphone didn’t work either, so his voice was drowned out by the commotion within the audience. What a catastrophe. What a mess. He stumbled and fumbled and finally – as the microphone finally came back on line – turned the proceedings over to the auctioneer.
The people at the table where we sat were very understanding. They were sympathetic to Tobias’ plight. One said to tell him that the message had been received, even if the video hadn’t been seen. Judith was obviously sad as well.
I got up and found Tobias in the shadows, being hugged by Blaire. I gave him a big hug, and told him what others had said. “The message had been received. Everyone understood.”
But he was devastated, I could tell. He was looking back at the courtyard, where all those people had been assembled, where they had been waiting to understand a little more of the tremendous success that HT had accomplished …. People had flown in from all over the world to support Human Translation at this fund raiser, and here – after weeks of preparation – Tobias' set-piece film had failed.
But he swallowed his pride and said “I think we’re gonna be okay.” The auction had started, but the audience was a bit distracted. The first auction items had started to be bid, but there wasn’t much activity from the guests.
Then Dick Grace got up and spoke again. He reminded people briefly about why this event had been mounted. And he said that Tobias should try to show the video one more time.
There are times when one wonders how the universe is constructed, how its gears and cogs can sometimes slip and scrape and bring things to a halt. Or how a stray electron can short out a circuit board one moment and bring things to a raucous end. Sometimes I think that what happened to Cambodia in the 1970s was an incident like that: Things collapsing, and the wrong people taking over, and then terrible, chaotic things happening that spun out of control. People forced to escape carrying their kids, crossing rivers and mountains and suffering terrible losses to get somewhere safe.
And then there are times when somebody says, “Remember why we are here. Let’s try it again.” And I don’t understand why, in the midst of all that, suddenly the gears mesh or the electrons suddenly pop and behave themselves, and the wondrous universe starts to make sense again. For some reason, the thing that failed once, or twice, or three times adjusts itself, and begins to work properly, as if nothing had ever happened.
And that was what happened that night.
The video ran the third time without a hitch. People saw a bit of what I had seen: What HT was doing on the ground, tens of thousands of miles away, in a place not much different than where we were sitting now – in a rural place, surrounded by lush countryside, in small communities, peopled by individuals of good will. The construction of the water gate, the clearing of mines, the grassing of the embankment, the faces of the hundreds of people there, in Balangk, who were changing their lives with a little help from Human Translation. The video talked about why Tobias had come to Cambodia, and how he had become involved, and what the steps were that HT was taking to help. It was a good video. It was personal, and honest, and it was asking for more help from these people in this valley. And as it ended, everyone applauded – and I hope you heard that applause, even though you’re so far away.
This is the video that everyone finally saw:
The auction begins.
And so the auction began in earnest. There were quite a few items – trips to Paris or Maine, wine, lots of stuff. There’s something about a charity auction that is unique, in that people will bid well above the value of an item because they want to really support an organization. At the same time, they’ll bid more than they normally would give outright because they feel they want to get some value for their money. I don’t pretend to understand it, but that’s human psychology I guess.
But the real trick at a charity auction is to leverage that basic human dynamic to get more out of the audience. And the auctioneer HT had at this event was an expert. About half-way through the auction he stopped it and said “And now, ladies and gentleman, we come to the part that we’ve all been waiting for: A time to pledge support for Tobias and Human Translation’s project. We’ll start the pledges at 10 thousand dollars, and then lower them step by step until everyone has had a opportunity to pledge. So now, who will pledge 10 thousand dollars for Human Translation?” And Dick Grace raised his paddle.
The pledging of support for HT begins.
“And who will pledge nine thousand dollars” and two more people raised their paddles. “And five thousand dollars” and four or five more people raised their paddles. And so it went, four, then three, then two, then one, then five hundred, then three hundred, then two, then one. And when the pledging was over, in ten minutes, the auctioneer said “Give yourselves a hand. You’ve just pledged nearly 85 thousand dollars for Human Translation.”
And the people did applaud, and they applauded very loudly, and if they couldn’t hear them back in Siem Reap, I swear they must be deaf!
Tobias after the pledge drive.
The auction then continued for more than an hour, with things like a pasta making machine going for several thousand dollars, and on and on. You have no idea of the pandemonium that was taking place.
Happy supporter of HT.
It was crazy. Absolutely crazy. People were pouring wine and in tears. And when it was over, Tobias thanked everyone, and people left happy, if somewhat lighter in their wallets, and it was about ten o’clock at night, cold and clear, with stars shining down on this strange little valley where people seemed to have more money than common sense. Everyone was in good spirits, even Tobias, at how well HT had done.
Tom and Judith
Special thanks go to all the loyal board members of Human Translation, who brought this wonderful event to fruition. And to the hundreds of community members who donated time and resources and so much more. There are too many to mention. And to the Engineers Without Borders, who devoted so much time and energy in the design and the construction of the water gate. And of course to performers who donated their special talents for this occassion, for the benefit of the people of Cambodia.
If you want to learn more about Human Translation - and maybe even make a small donation - go the http://www.humantranslation.org .
One of the temple sites that I was particularly interested in visiting was Bantay Srei, which is located about an hour outside of Siem Reap.
Bantay Srei holds a particular fascination for me because of the influence this temple had on the life of Andre' Malraux -- the adventurer, author, and one-time Minister of Cultural Affairs in France during the administration of Charles de Gaulle. As a student during the Viet Nam War, I became interested in Malraux as an example of someone who turned art into action. He not only wrote one of the most influential books of his time Man's Fate (La Condition Humaine). He was an acknowledged mytho-maniac, but he was also instrumental in re-forming the French perspective on Colonialism.
Malraux experiences in what was then called Indochina started when -- as a young man -- he came to Cambodia with the expressed purpose of finding Bantay Srei -- which previous French explorers had misplaced and confused with another site back in the 1920s. According to some historians, Malraux was a self-taught fanatic about art and culture, and he was intrigued with the legends of Bantay Srei's beautiful bas relief carvings. When the stock market crashed in 1922, leaving he and his new bride penniless, he determined to regain their economic stability by bringing examples of those temple carvings to France and selling them to museums (a form of commerce that was already well-established.) He deeply researched the known literature, pouring over the maps and recorded legends and stories of the Angkor area. Then he borrowed money to mount an exploration.
Unfortunately, so the story goes, while he was traveling to Cambodia on a trunk steamer, the colonial powers in Indochina passed a law prohibiting this kind of activity -- the first effort to preserve the temples in Cambodia from opportunists like Malraux. When Malraux arrived, he ignored this law and proceeded to mount his expedition. After several days of moving through the jungle, they found the temple, and his crew cut into the sandstone and removed several of the bas reliefs --cutting into the temple with hand saws. Fortunately, he was turned in to authorities and jailed -- sentenced to death.
When the French intelligentsia learned of his fate, a movement was started to get Malraux pardoned, and after many months in jail, he was released. The experience, however, radicalized him, and he went on to form an anti-colonial newspaper in Vietnam called "Indochina in Chains" -- one that the government attempted to shut down on several occasions and co-founded the Young Annam League -- a proto-Communist organization. His experiences in seeking Bantay Srei were fictionalized in what Malraux called an "anti-memoir" entitled "The Royal Way." While working in Vietnam, he wrote his second novel called "Man's Fate" -- a novel that predicted the Chinese Revolution and idealized the political struggles of the disenfranchised peasants in China. He wrote this novel without ever having visited China, yet its influence on the French intellectual community was profound.
Malraux went on to fight in the Spanish Civil War and in the French Resistance during WWII. He was captured twice, and sentenced to death on one occassion. He became such a towering "heroic" intellectual figure in France that his influence deeply impacted how the French Governments began to deal with its former colonial holdings. Like many, I admired Malraux's intelligence, his activist sentiments, and his deep concern with art and the rights of disenfranchised. (He wrote many books on art and culture that, in some people's mind, were the first look at global artistic cultural movements.)
That being said, in Cambodia Malraux is understandably portrayed as a villain for his desecration of Bantay Srei -- an example of the thieving nature of European opportunists who care nothing for the heritage of the Cambodian people. Even at the Cambodian Royal Palace they have a video display where they comment on Malraux's exploits, characterizing him as a simple theif.
This got me thinking about Malraux's influence again, and how that played out during the Khmer Rouge' days, when France embraced the regime and ignored -- as many western countries ignored -- the evidence of the auto-genocide. Did Malraux's preoccupation with populist peasant revolutions damper an awareness of the dangers of the Khmer Rouge'?
In Francois Bizot's excellent memoir of the fall of Phenom Penh "The Gate", he relates how he had tried to inform a well-known French journalist of what was going on -- based upon his own personal experience as a captive of the Khmer Rouge'. Bizot, in 1975, had first-hand knowledge of the tortures and executions of innocent people by the Khmer Rouge', and he later ended up being the only Western captive that was ever released by them. The French journalist who Bizot was trying to inform would have none of it. It was as though a veil of a "politically correct sentiment" had been dropped over the workings of the Khmer Rouge' regime, and the French intelligentsia could not or would not pass judgment on a populist Communist peasant revolt.
This reference in "The Gate" caused me to wonder if the influence of Malraux's radicalization fifty years before was still being reflected in the minds of people who should have known better. At that time -- in 1975 (Malraux died in 1976) -- Malraux's influence was still being felt, along with a lot of naive sentiments about Indochina.
In any event, Bantay Srei had proven to be a subtle and immutable influence in my own thinking, emanating out of my readings of Malraux, long before this trip. So actually seeing the temple was -- for me -- a really important event. The actual visit was not a disappointment at all.
The temple, in size, is extremely small when compared to Angkor Wat. Yet the carvings and decorations are so exquisite that they dwarf the artistic workmanship of any of the other temples we visited. We found ourselves walking around in awe of its beauty. So unique are the qualities of these bas reliefs that, when one sees them out of context -- such as in the museum at Siem Reap -- they are immediately recognizable.
I remember saying to Judith that -- if Malraux was destined to steal from a temple -- at the very least he knew he should steal from only the most exquisite. But for an intellectual, his lack of a moral compass may have idealized the human struggle for peace and justice, and the resulting silence may have ultimately had a significant effect on the lives and deaths of many people in the era of the Khmer Rouge'.
This is a slide show documentary of our recent excursion to Balangk Commune near Siem Reap, Cambodia following Tobias Rose-Stockwell, Director of the Human Translation Organization. It documents a single day as he and his engineer, Chai -- along with Venerable Mean Somet, a Buddhist monk -- show us the progress of their water irrigation project.
The project was a collaboration with the New York chapter of Engineers Without Borders, HT's supporters in the Napa Valley, countless contributors to the HT Website, and the community of Balangk Commune.
Most of these photos were taken with my Blackberry Curve cell phone. The resolution isn't great, but it was a handy way to quickly document an amazing day.
In the West we are taught that the Angkor temples were lost for centuries only to be "discovered" by a Frenchman at the beginning of the last century.
But the people who lived here knew that the hundreds and hundreds of temples were in the jungle and still visited most of them, though they were no longer maintained by the generations of kings.
When we really lost Cambodia was when the US started dropping millions of bombs on the villagers - first during the Johnson administration, and finally in the secret bombings of the Nixon administration. These bombing raids - dropping more bombs on this gentle nation than all that were dropped in WWII- became the primary propaganda events used by the Khmer Rouge to attract farmers into their ranks, ultimately causing the auto genocide of over a million people and the destruction of many of the ancient sculptures within the temples.
It's sobering thought that this is the same technique that the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq are using today.
Last night we witnessed Kymer orphans at a local NGO re enact the beautiful traditional dances of their ancestors. These kids spend two hours every day before school to practice. They were extraordinary.
This morning, before we left for the airport, we stopped for a tour of the Angkor Hospital for Children, another NGO where I interviewed for a job. Families come from all over Cambodia to bring their children for treatment - and they handle over 300 kids a day for stuff like malnutrition, water borne illnesses, and - increasingly - burn victims. It's a 50 bed hospital that is a model of care, though lacking itself in basic infrastructure things like consolidated IT services. It's a project I know I can help them build, though I haven't figured out yet how to bring them what they need.
Cambodia is rebuilding quickly, trying to meet its own destiny. This is not a nation like Thailand and not like Viet Nam and not like Malaysia not a bit like China. Its people have been the most gracious and kind and gentle and humble hosts that I have ever had a chance to meet. There seems to be no hostility towards Americans. We have always felt welcomed. As a nation of individuals, they seem to have large and open hearts. We hope we can find a way to help.
We are now back in Bangkok. But this trip now just seems to be starting. Judith and I are already thinking about the next steps. If Cambodia had been lost before, perhaps it was only lost to our imaginations in the West.
We managed to help throw a surprise birthday party for Arwen. The party started Friday night at Karen and Howie's house who opened their beautiful place at around 9PM. Pizza and lots of ex pat friends from the NGO community. People started trickling out at around 11:30 and Bryan whispered to us that a second party was to begin at another place at midnight. So Judith and I slipped out and found two friends on motos who whisked us away across the moon-lit river to where decorations awaited proclaiming "Arwen's Birthday Bonanza". When Arwen showed up with Bryan she was judiciously surprised, and the celebration lasted until 3. Lots of drinking and music and people just kept coming. Judith and Karen and Howie and I decided about 1:30 that we were too old to keep up, so we headed out. But they only had their single moto, and all the tuk tuk drivers had gone to bed. So Karen offered to walk us part way to help us find our directions back to the hotel. Along the river we walked through sleepy Siem Reap where the only people awake were a small flock of hookers clustered on the bridge. No problem for us.
The next day we found Howie and Karen at pool side of our hotel. They say our hotel is like their living room. Arwen and Bryan and many others ended up joining us.
Arwen decided that she wanted to see the sunset on her birthday at Angkor Wat. So we piled into a tuk tuk and headed out to the temples. We arrived just as the guards were chasing the tourists off the massive complex. So we played hide and seek in the temples and every time one would find us and demand that we leave, we said, "OK, but can we take your picture?" Which would delay the inevitable a bit longer. Then off we'd go again to hide. The place is enormous, so we took lots of pictures of guards, and managed to be the last ones out.
Here is a picture of Arwen and Judith just before sunset: after which we had a wonderful dinner. The end of a beautiful birthday for a 25 year old beauty.
Bryan put us up one night at Hôtel de la Paix - the five star hotel where he works as Executive Chef. It was great, and the swimming pool looked like a scene from a mafia movie. He also treated us to dinner, which is certainly his professional focus. It was delicious. But it's a far cry from what's going on in most of the town.
The old market is where you can find almost everything in the world. From new shoes to fresh snails to bananas to raw silk to kitchen ware to pigs knuckles. Want a carving of a buddha for your meditation room? Heck, you could furnish a million temples, complete with straw mats, incense, buddha and an oil painting of your favorite karaoke star.
The old market is one of three in Siem Reap, that also includes the New Market and the Night Market. Got a silk bathrobe for 18 dollars - negotiated down from 28. The trick is, evidently, to ask what the price is and then immediately say "Are you CRAZY!?!". It works.
We've been in Siem Reap for more than a week, with lots of side trips to various spots, all by motor bike or tuk tuks - which are little carriages pulled by a moto. The cost of renting a tuk tuk is between 10 and 15 dollars a day - depending on how far you want to go. You can't rent a moto, but moto drivers will let you hop on for about 50 cents. But you have to remember to mount and dismount on the left, or you end up with a "moto tattoo" on your leg: a nasty burn from the tail pipe.
The moto serves as every form of transportation in Siem Reap- including the family car, personal truck, portable snack stand, and delivery vehicle. We've seen as many as five people on a single moto: two adults and three children cradled between arms of parents or hanging off the back. Of course helmets are unusual. Sometimes you'll see three or more scooting along on a single bike, frantically texting on their cell phones. Last week we say a man bringing ten pigs - belly up in the sun - tied to a platform on the back seat. Tobias said they were drugged, which kept them quiet. Another time we witnessed a boy carrying a full length mirror, four feet by four feet, some how balanced on the back seat. It was disconcerting because the mirror was not covered, so it appeared the driver was going in two directions simultaneously.
Then there is also the crazy way moto drivers zoom at intersections: a sort of dance by which any semblance of left-hand or right-hand right of way is completely optional.
Hard to believe, but after a week of being here, one loses all fear of motos. We've yet to see a single accident, and we've never heard anyone raise their voice in anger. Road rage does not seem to exist. People merely toot twice and pass you; on the left or the right or anyway they can, three or four or five at a time. It's a ballet, crazy and beautiful to watch.
That's the way it is on the Moto Planet of Siem Reap. Phnom Penh, by comparison, is a mad house.
This temple is a mountain temple with two long pathways to it: one for people and one for elephants. It's also called the sunset temple but we went when no one was there.
Today we went to an abandoned temple an hour's drive from the tourist temples. This is what we did.
Most of these photos were shot with my Black Berry Curve PDA/Cell phone. It was very handy and with the 2 megapixel camera, it was convenient to take a shot and email it to friends immediately.
Unfortunately, while climbing over these massive stones, I slipped and dropped the cell phone. Fortunately, the Black Berry is pretty rugged and it still functioned just fine. Only, considering the abrasive nature of those stones, I was worried about the plastic and the screen getting scratched.
Normally, I don't promote any products, but in this case I have to acknowledge that Invisible Shield -- a thin protective cover that I'd purchased online -- completely saved the day. The shield itself was slightly scratched, after the cell phone slid down the rocks and into a crevice. But the plastic itself was unscathed. Amazing. They say that they use this same covering in the military to protect helicopter blades from wear in the deserts of Iraq. I believe it. This stuff is a great covering to protect a cell phone. Best of all, it comes with a life-time replacement guarantee. I've since emailed Zagg -- the organization that sells Invisible Shield -- for a replacement. I'll post here if they come through. But even if they don't replace it, the product is definitely worth the extra price.
