The last bump had us airborne but we nonchalantly continued our conversation. As I sat with Jeremiah in our off-roading moto-taxi after an exotically decadent $5 (a whole days allowance) American breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee, it occurred to me… This should be weird! Getting jostled and tossed in an open air Cambodian taxi as it drives against traffic and on sidewalks should be crazy or at least scary but it isn’t.
In the last few days I’ve found myself in what seems to me to be a perfectly ordinary and rational moment only to realize that to most people I know (and even former me) it isn’t.
- Watching glee in my dark tent, because the electricity is off in the house in which I’ve pitched it, in a Cambodian village of endless rice patties and crowing lizards.
- Debating as to which prostitute to buy for the evening because they are all our friends and its hard to choose.
- Allowing the local kids to rise my freshly washed hair with slightly green pond water, complete with lily pads, worms and fish.
- Walking around carrying half naked babies that aren’t mine.
- Using a headlamp to find the bathroom on moonless nights
- Eating meat, eggs, or chapati purchased from the African man screaming outside the bus window.
- Walking down dirt roads with endless rice patties on either side listening to “All Along the Watchtower”
- Wearing a medical mask as a part of every outfit
- Buying rubber band sealed sandwich bags of food from the local outdoor bazaar.
- Passing the neighborhood elephants on the way home from the bar.
It took me awhile to even think of those because they are so not strange anymore. Catching air on a bus or car ride is so ordinary we sleep through it. Eating things you can’t identify isn’t exotic or even exciting, its just dinner. We get excited over the things that others take for granted: seeing white people (yes me too, black people in Asia and Asians in Africa are also exciting), McDonald’s, toilets, showers, hot water, ice, dairy products (especially cheese), carpet, non-instant coffee, free drinking water, Pepperige Farm cookies, Candy and chip that aren’t prawn or seaweed flavored, pizza…
As I sat on the roof admiring the night time view of Phnam Pehn with Marcelle (Andrea). We talked about what it meant to have lost our old conception of “normal”. We decided we didn’t want it back and hope that its gone to stay (though we worry as the race approaches its end that that will not be the case). I think of all the hang ups I don’t have here, all the opportunities I don’t miss here, all the fun, and love, and joy and blessing I experience here and its an easy choice and not so crazy as you’d think.
