Cambodia Questions

I don’t know what words to use to describe my week. I could go through each days’ activities, relaying humorous and possibly deep stories as I chronicle a week on the other side of the world, working with the poorest of the poor. But that wouldn’t be enough. I could try to make sense of the marginalized mired abject poverty from the perspective of an upper-middle class white kid who has never truly known hunger, pain, or need. But my words could never express the emotions inside me that I can’t fully feel, much less put into written form.

I’m left with more questions than answers, a familiar place for me for certain. Why was I born in America to a loving family with enough money for more than we need? How can I summon the audacity to cry over the trifles the I call my problems when those children held joy in their hearts with next to nothing to their name? How many of the children that I looked in the eye have been beaten, starved, and sexually exploited?

But more than anything, how do I sleep peacefully every night in my warm bed while these I have seen and countless others are hurting? How is it that I call my life Christian when I take the time to pray for my personal wish list, yet consistently fail to bring their case to the Father? What good is my faith if I look only for the rewards, never the obligations?

Cambodia – Take 2

What a week. Hundreds of street children were fed, clothed, taught, and loved. I personally cut hair, carried children, taught English, facilitated games, led singing, went with skits at a moments notice, ate with kids, and combed for lice. Kids climbed all over me (Five at a time at one point), used my hat, and playfully punched me from all directions and in all body parts. I was offered prostitution services twice within 3 minutes one night. I got some heat-exhaustion sickness after sweating more than I ever had before and slept it off for about 13 hours. I danced as crazily as possible with a crowd of 200 plus watching my every move.

But as of today (Wednesday at 4:45 PM), I know of one thing I hope to take with me from this trip. Today I was broken. I melted down.

It was two hours into our final party day with the kids. It was my chance to give the kids haircuts, which I thought would be really fun and cool. Kaz and I had given each other mohawk hairstyles, and the kids thought they were really cool. Many had come and told us they wanted the same haircut. But things did not shake out the way I expected.

First of all, I was very stressed when it was about time to start, because I was getting conflicting orders about when to start. The previous year they had been cutting hair all week off to the side, but this time we were cramming it into one afternoon. I was worried that we would not have time for everyone who was already crowding around the haircut station, but I was told not to cut hair yet. Kids were jockeying for position and trying to tell me what they wanted in broken English.

Eventually, I got the all clear to start cutting hair, but before I was halfway finished with the first kid, I was told I had to stop by someone else. To make matters worse, I had forgotten the electric shaver I bought with my mom in my car in Austin, so we were using a different one with no guards. I had one length available, and it was really short. The kids said that the kid in my seat wanted it all even and short. But when I cut it, they started laughing, and the kid felt bad. I don’t have much experience cutting hair, much less in high stress situations, and thus his hair wasn’t exactly even. In fact, it was far from even, a lot closer to hideous.

The heat added to my misery. I have no idea what the temperature was that afternoon, but I know it was scorching. Even in the shade, I had sweating drenching my back and chest and dripping down my face. Sweat in the eyes does not help a new barber. It poured off me, many times forming huge drops that would fall from my nose onto the kids I was working with.

In addition to all that, I’m really hungry again. You see, every day for lunch a different nation cooks for all the kids and staff. But without fail, every day they cooked something I was allergic to. That means I’m trying to run on my highest energy output setting to make it fun for the kids and spur on the staff, but I’m running on empty.

The second kids wanted a mohawk, and I was able to do it pretty well, and then I handed off to Kaz for the next few kids. While I was waiting for my turn to cut, my first kid came back to see me. I tried to be positive about it, but he was not having it. He was mad, and demanded my hat to help him hide the mess I had made of his head. Bear in mind this is my new CotH hat, so it was not my dearly beloved beaten up hat, but my number two. I unwillingly parted with it.

I tried to put some music on, which had been lacking the last two days. I’ll explain…

Day 1 we had no music, because nobody was in charge of it. I asked P’Robert about it near the end of the day, and he told me that if I could make it happen to do it. I had brought blank CDs and my laptop for just that purpose. Day 2 comes, and we pop in my freshly burned CD of great dance music. Things are great for a few minutes. Ben and I dance poorly and crazily for about five straight minutes, then are replaced by the twins, Keith and Kenneth, who do actual dancing. But then the CD starts to skip, and we have to turn it off.

Turns out that on the long flight, my CDs had all been jostled and scratched. I tried to burn new ones that night, but of who knows how many attempts, only three CDs got written. Of those, only one would play in the stereo we had. So back to Day 3, I tried to play the one working CD. Almost immediately, it begins skipping.

At this point, it feels an awful like everything I do is crashing and burning. It’s hard for me to convey looking back just how frustrated, upset, and angry I was. I think at this point I looked over and saw three other guys all doing a much better of cutting hair than me. Then the little kids with my hat runs up and says, “I keep,” which I take to mean he’s going to keep my hat.

In an act of selfishness that borders on astounding, I decided that I would go buy a hat for the kid so I could get my hat back. As I walked the block or so to the hotel, I was furious, not at the kid, but at the situation and at myself for everything that had happened and was happening. Why didn’t I double-check to make sure I had the clippers? Why didn’t I make sure the CDs were safe? Why didn’t I think to get food beforehand? I was completely overwhelmed by everything, but mostly my own weakness and inability to do things right. My positivity was just about at zero.

And somehow, as I resolutely walked to serve myself first by buying a hat for the kid, I was struck by a Bible verse. My power is made perfect in your weakness. God’s power is made perfect when I can’t do it. When I fail. When I am not enough. When everything I do goes down in flames and good still comes of it, the good is all from God, and it is evident that it is all Him. I turned around and said to myself, “Go back and be weak,” then jogged back to the kids.

Did everything go well for me after that? Not really. It wasn’t quite as bad as the first two hours, but that last hour wasn’t great for me by any means. I got to brush some girls’ hair for lice and got to see the first kid get his hair cleaned up so it looked okay. He even smiled and gave me a hug. But at the end of the day, I knew that I has failed, miserably. Yet God had made good things out of my pathetic attempts to love like His Son. I want to remember that, because surely this is not the last epic failure I will live through. Especially with my first summer as Camp Director coming up, I will likely be failing at being Jesus much more often. But I want to remember that even when my best effort falls far short, God is good enough anyway.