Reality: I sleep on a one-inch pad on the ground in a tent. There are bugs. There is sweat. There are chimes and chanting at 6 AM. There are dogs barking and growling and playing against my tent at all hours. There are kids laughing and yelling and peeking in the windows and messing up the bathroom. There is a shower that works sometimes, that stops spraying water right after I put all of the shampoo in my hair.
I have eaten so much rice. Approximately one million and forty-two and a half grains of rice in the past seven months. That is 5,405.6 grains of rice per day on average, which is most likely an exaggeration. Rice on rice. That is the point. I put iced coffee and french fries on a pedestal only reachable by the pedestal reserved for couches. Why is the world rejecting couches?
I sleep while everyone I know is awake. I have not seen my family in seven months and seven days. I have not eaten lunch at Los Bravos with my friends in over seven months. I have not hugged Jayden or pulled his ear or played Little League World Series on the Wii or just listened and smiled while he and Jordan sing off-key to Adele and Taylor Swift in the back seat of my car on the way to a 3-D cartoon at the theater in seven months.
I have left every place I have called “home” for a month at a time this year. I have left all of the places I have gone and the people I have met. All of the chocobanana stands and smoothie ladies and ministry contacts and little soccer buddies and sweet little old ladies. I have packed and unpacked my bag even more than that.
I sweat. I sweat so much. My clothes are dirty and worn. They never really get clean. I wear the same five shirts over and over. Mosquitos have taken up residence in my things. I walk almost everywhere. My feet are always dirty. My face is always broken out.
I live with at least five other girls 24/7. All the time. Always. I cannot go anywhere by myself. I can’t go to the mini-mart or take a walk down the road. There are at least six opinions in every discussion, every decision.
I cannot understand anything that people are saying. I can’t read the signs. I can’t read the menus. I need pictures to order food.
I just broke my third pair of headphones.
People lie on the side of the road. Real people. Real, dirty people that have nowhere to go and no way to get there. Just lying on the sidewalk. People live in houses made of leaves. Real people live in houses made of leaves. People are oppressed and forced from their countries. Real people have to sell their children because of their debts. Real children are out in the streets, begging for money and food the way that they have been taught to do to help their families. Real children do not know any other life.
There are children that live in small slum communities, basically on the street. There are little children, babies, that live in an abandoned train station. They get picked up in their diapers or oversized t-shirts. They have lice and a constant stream of snot running from their noses to their mouths. They have infections on their heads and scabs and open wounds on their feet. They kick and hit and bite. They scream and run away when you try to teach them how to share.
The world stinks. Like literally, the world smells bad. There is trash lying around. There is smoke in the air. There is sewage in the streets.
And in between the elephant rides and Thai pants and cafes with hazelnut iced coffees, things can be difficult. Like real life. Like real, broken life.
The whole world is broken in different ways.
One of the kids we pick up at the train station knows the dance to the Gangam Style song. If you play it for him, he smiles. He gets excited. He starts to dance even if he is doing something else. He dances to it while he picks up the toys. He dances while he is playing with blocks. He can’t not dance when he hears the music. If you pause it, he looks up at you with serious, unimpressed big brown eyes. Beautiful big brown eyes that know just how broken the world can be a lot more personally than I do. Even if he doesn’t understand it yet. When he runs, right after he chooses the goose by hitting his back with more voice than all of the ducks, his arms flop around at his sides; his eyes are wide; his mouth is open in a big, goofy smile that does not know a different life, that does not know that it is unacceptable for three-year-old little boys to live in a place that no longer meets the standards for trains.
There are two children that live on the compound where we are this month who were left there by their mother a couple of weeks ago. They do not know when or if she is coming back. There are several other kids and preschoolers that hang out with our team during the day. Kids that get to just be kids for a fewer hours a day
They are smart. Even with the language barrier, they know what we want them to do. And they are clever. They usually find ways around those things. They apologize in English. They ask for our names in English before they make requests. They pick up the chairs that are supposed to mark the boundaries for their play area in order to keep them out of meeting rooms, and they take the chair with them to where they want to go.
I get irritated and impressed at the same time.
They are kids.
And yes, the world is broken. There are a lot of unacceptable realities all over the world. A lot of things that are not as I think they should be. Not fair or right or good or tolerable.
The sweat and the bugs and the rice take a back seat to those things. Because they should. But that does not really make it all more enjoyable. And sometimes, the world seems too broken, too much for lying in a pool of my own sweat in a tent in Cambodia to help or make any significant difference at all.
I get that Month 7 feeling.
Sometimes, I feel like a little kid that wants to dance, and the song keeps buffering and pausing. And I look around with challenging eyes, waiting for the things that make me want to dance to come back.
But even when life is not that great, it is still pretty great.
I’m still in Cambodia. I’m still on this life-changing adventure. I still know a whole lot of people who love me. I am still making lifelong friendships and becoming a part of a phenomenal community. I’m still me, and I’m still redeemed. And I still get to live and move and breathe and ride an elephant every once in a while.
I still get to try. I still get to dance.
And even when the world is broken, there is hope shining through the cracks. There are children running and playing and dancing and carrying chairs across the yard.
“But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.” -John Green, Paper Towns
