A few of the pictures in my mind
I have not talked about my time in Thailand to anyone since I've been home. I've been home for 2 months. This may sound strange, but for once I have understood those scenes in movies where soldiers come home from Vietnam. They are too horrified by what they have seen that they can't even begin to speak to you. Sometimes I don't feel right here anymore.
You ask me how Thailand was. I say it was good. People don't want to really hear what things were like. It's too "depressing". People can't be bothered to be reminded of how the rest of the world lives everyday.
At first you felt like you could save the world. One night in Vietnam, I was walking down the street with a German friend I had made. He was a doctor. We passed a boy who was so scrawny and so little. He was trying to sell us a shoe. Just one shoe he had found. The German doctor and I took him into the nearest restaurant and said he could order whatever he wanted. The Vietnamese waitress translated, smiling, saying what good people we were. He ordered all these vegetables; he was a devout buddhist, this little boy. No meat. He slurped down his coke with a few signs of embarressment, and shoved fried vegetables into his mouth. The doctor and I each excused ourselves to the bathroom. When we came back, the boy was gone. The Vietnamese waitress said this is how things are done, so that neither party is shamed.
After a while you got a sense that your generosity meant nothing, and that the suffering on a larger scale was overwhelming. You are vain to ever think you could make a difference. I saw a woman selling her own baby. I saw people missing limbs and eyes because of landmines. I saw a baby dying in an orphanage in Cambodia and there was nothing I could do for it.
I can't deny that I think about the poverty I encountered in Asia everyday. For some reason, I feel like I am still there. That I never really came back. I remember walking down the street, and a dirty, starving girl came running towards my friend. This girl wrapped her arms around my friends legs, crying and begging in the Khmer language. We didn't have any money, but the girl wouldn't let go. She looked like if she didn't have something to eat, she'd die. We didn't have anything for her. My friend cried, and so did the girl.
In Laos, I became so ill with Dengue Fever that I almost died. I remember what it felt like to feel like I was dying. You can not tell if you are alseep or awake. I wondered if I would ever see my father again, and all the things I wanted to tell people. There is a certain surrender in this feeling of near-death amongst those who have spent their entire lives slowly dying. It is, ironically, the deepest peace I have ever felt.
I remember when I was transferred to the village that had clean needles. It was on a bumpy truck. I looked to my left and saw women carrying baskets amongst the biggest, foggiest mountains I have ever seen. At the clinic, I stood in the hallway, near collapsing. I was crying because I felt so weak and I didn't know what was going to happen to me. I hadn't had a conversation in English for almost a week. I was in line to see the doctor. No one could communicate with me, but the ten people who stood in line ahead of me moved me up to the front. Old men who were frail, boys who were shaking silently, pushed me ahead of them. A lost foreigner in a strange land.
When I was released I was allowed to go out for a 10 minute walk to regain my strength. There was a temple on the ground. It was monsoon season, raining hard, so I went inside. A monk was teaching children to play the Xylophone. The girl who kept messing up kept trying again and again and again. She was looking at me. The proprietor told me these were all children with AIDS who had lost their parents, and the monks were giving them "something to do instead of wait to die." I smiled at the girl. She smiled back. You can see her on the far right.
In a village in Cambodia, I walked out on to the street. Before I knew it, 100 children of all ages and sizes swarmed towards me, hands outstretched, begging, crying ,pleading, saying "please please please"- the only English word they knew.
I distinctly remember that moment. I stood there, amongst a crowd of people for whom there was no hope, a thousand voices becoming indistinct. I thought of my family. I thought of my friends. I thought of many things.
copyright Jane Callahan 2006