Mornings in Battambang are like nothing you’ve ever lived before. They are full of routine that somehow always surprises you, joy in unlikely places, and new lessons to be learned with each day dawning.
Mornings in Battambang start like this;
You’re asleep on your sleeping pad inside a humid and sweltering tent on a tile floor. A rooster crows and you feel yourself roll over, only to have you back peel off your sleeping pad where sweat has tried to glue you to it. You sigh. The rooster crows again. You check your watch and see its 4 AM. Aren’t roosters supposed to only crow when the sun comes out?!
You feel the hard tile against your back, your shoulder, your hip, your stomach as you roll over. Your sleeping pad has slightly deflated overnight. The scary thought of it having a hole flits through your mind before you brush it away, knowing that somehow if you think this horrible thought to be true, it will be.
You doze for another hour while to rooster continues to crow, dogs bark in the distance, and motos zoom by. At 4:45 AM, your teammates are waking up. You jump to your feet, knowing that if you think about it too long just you might not get up. Groggily, you pull on shorts and a shirt, swipe some deodorant on, grab your toothbrush, and hurry to the sink down the hall.
Bright eyed students greet you on your way with cheery “Good morning!” or “Hello, teacher!” and respectful bows that you stop and reciprocate each time. You smile and marvel at how awake these precious lives are at this early hour. They are a reminder of what you’re here to do despite the discomforts.
You stop at the sink and refuse to look down at it, remembering how last night when you brushed your teeth, a little cockroach friend came crawling up out of the drain. Instead, you thank God for running water, and pretend not to see the dead flies sticking to the porcelain, as you brush and hurry back to your room.
Despite the less than comfortable start to your day, you and your team make it downstairs. Grabbing your shoes from where you, per Cambodian tradition, left them at the front door the night before, you hurry out of the front gate. The fourteen girls who live at Lighthouse are already waiting, standing just inside the fluorescent blue circle of light given off by the light post outside the gate.
“Okay, we run,” one of them says. And you do. You pick up your feet and you run after these girls. Soon, the light from Lighthouse falls away and you can only barely see a warm orange light glowing in the distance. But between here and there is a vast stretch of blackness. Since it’s so dark, you follow closely behind the girls, trusting their direction and footing.
Without your eyes, you begin to notice more.
The only real sound, here on the quiet street, is the sound of the girl’s flip-flops pounding against the dirt covered asphalt and a few clucking chickens and roosters in neighbor’s yards as you pass.
But then there are the smells—Cambodia smells wet, in the early morning especially so. The wetness compounds with trash, long standing water, and organic rot creating a sour smell you catch a whiff of every so often. Sharply contrasted with the smell of decay is the smell of incense. The early rising Buddhist faithful light incense. Its smoky tang tickles your nose as you breathe deep to keep up.
As you run, you pray. You pray for these girls and their futures. You pray that they will be safe, and get good educations, and truly take to heart the Lord’s word being spoken into their lives each day. You pray that they grow in beauty, in strength, and in heart so that they know who they are, not who the many beauty shops you pass daily in Battambang say they should be.
You stop running, as the girls have stopped running. They all stand in a clump underneath the warm yellow light that once looked like a distant speck. While you catch your breath, a couple of the girls wave to the shop owner across the street who is stoking his cooking fire for the day. The hum of a moto sounds around the corner and all the girls hurry out of the middle of the road just in time for it to zoom passed.
You’ve barely rested when the first girl starts running back. Returning always feels longer than the run out, but you make it. You stretch with the girls, do a few sit ups and planks, and then head upstairs as they begin getting ready for school.
Sitting on the second floor balcony with your Bible and journal resting in your lap, you await the sunrise. By now, the sky is graying. The Buddha song rises before the sun, and you cannot avoid hearing the false prayer blaster over your neighborhood through loudspeakers from the temple around the corner.
The loud prayer bothered you at first, but now you focus on the sounds of the birds chirping, the chickens and ducks calling, and the sound of the students shouting up and down the stairs to one another. Despite the Buddha song’s attempt to be loudest of all, it fades to the background in favor of these sounds—the sounds of God’s creation and his community.
King David said that those who worship idols become like them—void of any senses or feeling. The thought makes you sad. You pray against the Buddha prayer and for any caught under its oppression while the sky is still dark but the song is loud.
When the sun does finally break, revealing towering palms, forests of banana trees, rooftops, and the hazy Cambodian morning, you greet the Lord with a song. An hour of quiet time later, you can smell rice wafting up to your balcony seat and hear the tin clank of you teammate’s coffee mugs. You itch to be with this community who is learning your true heart and loving you despite its wounds and difficulties. You thank the Lord, and at 7:00 AM your day is really only just beginning.
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Hey! I hope you all liked me trying something a little different. How special mornings are here is difficult for me to explain, so I tried to make it immersive by using the second person “you”. Let me know if it worked or not! Thanks, as always, for reading!
Currently: Home Café, eating the best pad thai of my life (so far) | 5:08 PM | 85% Funded | When Moses asked God, “Who am I that you would send me?” God answered, “I will be with you”. Small comforts as I seek to know who I am|
