Back in Phnom Penh, I lounged around and vaguely helped until trippers arrived on Saturday. Tim works in the PEPY office and did all the heavy lifting for this trip whereas I just did the emailing beforehand. I think of him as older than me, but actually he just graduated from Notre Dame 3 months ago. So it's not an issue of more years but of competence. The longer I know him, the more I'm convinced he's secretly some charity/development/volunteery Superman. Seriously, this boy can do anything. Trusty Tim to the rescue!
My August companions: Catherine, Claire, Andria, and DJ. Avoiding the dust? Safe from bird flu? Escaped from the lab? On Sunday, we visited the Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields, which still feel haunted to me. Melancholy and lethargic, we went for a requisite meal at Friends, which has the joint revival powers of great food and a positive social change program in action. From there we visited a new posse on the bulging Phnom Penh NGO scene. The group is called Tiny Toones, and is a breakdancing group for kids and teenagers, primarily from the city slums.
The founder, KK, was a refugee from Cambodia to America. While growing up in Los Angeles, he joined the Crips, spent 3 years in prison and was then deported. Back in impoverished Cambodia, some local kids heard that he was a breakdancer and begged him to teach them. Eventually, he gave in. The group has grown from about 9 original students to a few hundred. They drop into the "studio" (whichever house they have found to rent and haven't yet been evicted from) every night to practice and learn. All the students have to be clean and sober to join the group, which gives many the incentive to fight the temptation of street drugs. They also help the kids enroll in school, and give free English classes. Some children, especially those from rough family situations, end up sleeping in the studio all night.
KK is quiet, tattooed neck-to toe, with a long ponytail and a beautiful smile. He chain-drank iced-coffee-in-a-baggie throughout the day, and seemed to be surrounded by ring of adoring kids wherever he happened to be sitting. (In the last photo below, he's in the front row in a white shirt.)
We went on a Sunday, for the weekly dance-off in the park between different neighborhoods. We sat on the pavement, with the square roll of linoleum serving as the dancefloor enveloped by rapt faces of children, adults, and a few foreigners. Our group judged, Khmer Idol-style, as each group faced off, each kid bringing insults and challenges to outdance one another. There's our judge, Claire "Nicer than Simon, sassier than Paula Abdul" Bauble! It was the Tiny Toones clan that mysteriously took the top prize, and thus got to dance-off with KK and some of the other older dancers and teachers. This guy in red: so hot. Maniac, maniac on the floor...
