The best day of my volunteer vacation in Cambodia
Journal entry:
4 August 2006
Today we met the recipients of the wheelchairs our group built earlier in the week. One was a woman now in her mid-40s who had contracted polio about a dozen years ago. She couldn’t walk but could move around on her hands with amazing efficiency. I was walking around taking pictures, when she came over to me and started pointing at herself and at me and at an infant being held by a someone across the room. I couldn’t figure out what she wanted or what her connection to the baby was. Grandmother? Aunt? She vaulted herself into the wheelchair and kept beckoning to me and speaking in Khmer. I finally understood that she wanted me to take a picture of the baby. I learned from the APDO staff that the woman (the “lady in red,” we called her) had desperately wanted a child and, against the odds, had finally had one. I think it’s glib to say that people all over the world are the same, because we – especially we privileged Americans – are separated by all kinds of boundaries and differences. But recognizing the fierce pride and love in her face as she watched her daughter, and knowing that I feel exactly the same emotions about my own 16-year-old daughter – well, culture and difference just melted right away.
Barbara