A Cambodian drama is unfolding before me.
I sat down at this cafe to write about what happened yesterday, but as I did a fight broke out on the street outside. Three Khmer men with wooden poles just beat two men pushing their motorbikes past the front of the shop. The scuffle was quick, with sickening hollow thuds and shouts. When the men had run away bloodied and bruised, the stick-wielders kicked over their motorcycles, smashing mirrors and headlights. They swung away at the bikes for five full minutes as pieces of plastic and glass flew about, and a crowd gathered to watch the show. The mob is still here now, waiting for the victims to return for their bikes.
This is not an uncommon moment here in Cambodia. There is no physical distance between confrontation and violence, between adversity and broken bones.
It seems I could begin every chapter of this journey with a story about violence and a motorbike. I have been witnessing near-fatal crashes with an eerie frequency since coming here – I’ve counted seven in the last week. This is not surprising, considering the nature of public safety; in Phnom Penh they turn off the traffic lights at 10pm, not for want of traffic, but to save electricity.
Outside this internet café the thugs just walked away with their sticks slung over their shoulders. While they were beating and smashing the bikes, the owner of this cafe said "Ah no problem! Is ok! You no worry!" and picked up the phone to call his cop, while shattered glass and chunks of plastic skittered into the shop.
In Phnom Penh a large percentage of the population are police officers without uniforms, but with guns. They protect and serve their friends and the people who pay them. This is common practice in a city where taking part in corruption is a form of self-protection. A individually privatized, public police force.
A man in a blue hockey jersey just calmly trotted through the internet cafe with an AK-47, and stashed it in the back. Another foreigner in the cafe with me, who has been here for a month tells me "Don't worry, that's the cop." Apparently, a gun is an acceptable insurance policy when dealing with confrontation.
I have been exploring this city with a friend who lives here. He has driven me around on his tiny, ancient motorbike. It is about the size of a lawn mower, but we both fit, zooming through the dark and filth-ridden streets as if we’re riding some bizarre nocturnal cricket. He has taken me to the local expat bars, to khmer nightclubs, and told me some strange stories.
His name is Mr. Mao, speaks thick British English, and walks with a limp. He is also Cambodian, and exactly my age. He decided to take me to the Spark, which is the number one nightclub in Phnom Penh. It is massive, full of hundreds of Khmer kids bouncing to live pop in a giant amphitheatre. It was a disturbing contrast to the things I had been seeing over the last week. Most of these kids were driving land cruisers. Most of these kids were drinking 4 dollar drinks. I could have been in any swank nightclub at home, if it weren’t for the music. I was the only foreigner in the crowd of thousands. I had some distinct sense that the building contained every child of every ranking government official in Phnom Penh. The haves in a country of have-nots, desperate to embrace their own elitism and desperate to get away. I found it hard to swallow that inequity, and left that night with a bad taste in my mouth.
The motorbikes have now been in the street for an hour, cracked and mangled. I have been watching them shutter the front of the café, and bolt the door. Everyone here expects a fight when the bruised drivers return with their friends to reclaim the bikes.
One night Mr. Mao took me to a place where things felt right. A bar, far down a lightless street in the middle of town, full of expat NGO workers sharing their sadness. I made dozens of local contacts in the nights I spent there, and every person I met had a sad story about their work. It was never that it was too much stress, or that they were overworked. It was never that they weren’t paid enough, or that their bosses were horrible. It was always about their understanding of just how deep the wounds in this country go.
A full quarter of the people of Cambodia were slaughtered in its civil war. That quarter was the most educated and skilled percentage of the population. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, scholars - speaking any foreign language, expressing any individual thought, even just looking intelligent could get you killed. The Khmer Rouge feared knowledge, and they left that fear behind when they self-destructed.
More than half the population of this country is now under the age of 20. They don’t want to learn about their history, and what’s more, they are not taught. They have no desire to understand the atrocities their parents committed, they have no desire to relive such a painful past.
But these NGO workers feel it, and wear it every day. They have filled the gap left behind by a decimated government and endemic corruption. They are using their conviction to slowly rebuild this place, and it is more work than I ever imagined.
One thing you can feel when you speak with people in Cambodia, from rice fields in Battambang to storefronts in Phnom Penh, is the lingering hope.
The motorbike owners have arrived in a pickup truck full of their friends. There is a tense and heated discussion taking place, just outside. Two-dozen men are standing there, shouting. Everyone has called their personal cops. Everyone has a weapon.
Suddenly outside the shouting stops. There is silence, and I watch the two victims pick up their bikes, start them, and drive away. The truck full of reinforcements slowly rolls off, and the crowd laughs a bit, slowly disintegrating into the night like vapor.
I learn a moment later that the two victims were not victims at all. They had violently threatened the owner of the bar next door, and the mob was protecting him.
It is hard to see, but there is order in this chaos, and hope in Phnom Penh.
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