Cambodia is going to be fine

The longer I stay in Cambodia, the more I understand about what it is to live here, especially in the energy. I believe whole-heartedly in ghosts, because energy is powerful. Walls, rocks, places, hold energies and history, and I think that at some times there is such a flash of energy that it remains -- perhaps why violent deaths sometimes result in ghost sightings and stories.

There is an energy in Cambodia, and I didn't really even understand that until a friend and I were talking about it. She was in Thailand for a week and said now she thinks it's important to get out of the country at least once every few months because the energy here is heavy.

She's right -- there is a heavy energy here. Going to Sihanoukville or the islands, while relaxing, doesn't cut it, because it's still Cambodia and it still carries the weight of the genocide.

At the immigration office we're working on a separated family case, and between the sisters who have grown up in America and the sister left in Cambodia (born some years before the Khmer Rouge), the difference in their faces and eyes are incredibly striking. The one in Cambodia has years and  years of care and worry and hard work etched into her face, very little education and far too much hurt for her time. Those in America have wide, lively eyes and smooth foreheads.

Sometimes it gets frustrating -- actually, a lot. Corruption has been built into this country's government from the beginning and it is so entrenched now that it's hard to see even the start of the path out. Poverty and corruption are institutions and it affects all daily life. With the recent political stalemates, it highlights the problem even more.

One of my friends said it best -- more often than not, instead of being the "Kingdom of Wonder", Cambodia is the "Kingdom of Wondering What The Hell is Going On."

And yet.

Today I went to go see the circus. If you believe the internet, there is no circus school in Phnom Penh, only in Battambang, but there is a circus, a program of the Royal University of Fine Arts. Circus apparently dates back to the Angkorian times as there are bas-reliefs in Angkor Wat showing people tightrope walking and juggling.

The maybe ten performers were aged somewhere between ten or twelve to maybe late teens or early twenties, all but two male, and they were good. They attacked their work with focus and determination, with all the panache, showboating, and theatricality required for circus. They were choreographed, decently rehearsed, and actually very impressive.

When I left, I had this thought: Cambodia is going to be fine. It's going to be fine because there is a whole younger generation of people who are passionate about what they do and willing to take the time to invest themselves in it.

My brain afterwards was trying to be a cynic about it, saying that the system is so skewed that all that optimism and passion could get squashed -- a very specific google search that finally admits the existence of the school is full of how it might get shut soon and how the artists are not sure if they can actually make a living doing this.

But I can never shake that feeling, whether with these young performers or other dancers and artists I've met. They are not sure, but they are passionate and willing -- so it seems at least -- to take the risk. When they talk afterwards their words are unsure, but when they are performing their eyes are on fire.

It is not now, and change is a very, very slow, ardous, and ugly process. My mind can think of a thousand ways for things to go wrong and very few for them to go right. The passion of youth to be stamped out by the status quo and the old entrenched institutions and all that.

But whatever my mind thinks, my heart sees these young artists and believes unshakeably that in their hands, Cambodia is going to be fine.