July 5, 2008 - Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia 7:00pm

Cambodia has a huge lake called Tonle Sap, which is the center of their fishing, rice, and boating industry. The lake is also home to a fair sized population of the Cambodian people. I don't mean that they live around the lake, I mean on the lake. The lake hosts what are referred to as floating villages. Floating villages are exactly what they sound like. People construct houses out of twigs and wood, and other materials that float. There are entire villages created out of floating houses and market boats that bring items along the lake for purchase. The people who live in these villages may spend years never setting foot on land.

We spent the day on a boat touring these floating villages today. Though it may sound somewhat luxurious to live in such a village, I can assure you that it is nothing like the houseboats and Venitian villas that may come to mind. The citizens of the floating villages are among the poorest in Cambodia. Because of this, they are especially vulnerable to the dangers of human trafficking; mostly because they are easier to exploit as they need money, and partly because when kidnapped or assaulted, they have no access to the police or court system. The police and courts here function on an unofficial “fee for service” system, meaning that unless you pay them, you will get no help. The floating villagers are self-sustained in that they barter among themselves for food and goods. They also live in extremely close quarters, with a family of 5 or 6 dwelling in a 5'x6' floating shack. As wrong as it feels to say it, I can understand a little more what would lead a family in this situation to sell a child. Not only do they desperately need the money, but they also have neither the space nor resources to support them.

Strangely enough, as we boated through the villages, I felt calmer than I have since I've been here. I recognize that the people I was seeing were poor and struggling, and that I couldn't survive one day in their lives...but I don't think that realization went both ways. From what I could tell, they didn't seem all that unhappy. Weary: yes; unhappy: no. How could a person living in a shack the size of a closet, with no money to their names, living on nothing but sun-dried fish and lotus roots be happy? I know plenty of people with a gazillion times what they have who seem a lot more unhappy than what I saw. The only thing I can think is that they aren't comparing themselves to anything or anyone else. This is the only way of life that they know, and within that they are successful. They aren't sitting on their rafts thinking, “man, if only I were living in Mountain View, California, I would be sipping Starbucks while watching a video in my huge one-bedroom air-conditioned apartment I share with my cat.”

Meanwhile, we Americans compare ourselves constantly to others to see who has more, newer, bigger, better. And that's what makes us unhappy. We set standards for ourselves based on a reality that is not our own. We want want want. And what does it get us? It gets me pity for a people that are only pitiful according to my own lifestyle. It reminds me that I'm blessed and spoiled at the same time. It makes me question the American tendency to want to “save” other nations and cultures from lifestyles and realities that we deem inferior. But what would my interference get these people in the floating villages? Other than more food to fill their bellies, I have nothing to offer them. Nothing of value in their lives. I would only demote them from happily existing in their own sphere, to unhappily struggling in a different one.

I still believe that nobody deserves to be subjected to the inhumanities and degradation inherent in human trafficking, and I will still continue my fight to prevent that. But I am also learning to re-evaluate my ideas of need and pity. Perhaps it is more degrading to them for me to assume that they must be miserable and need my help, than to respect our differences and merely honor our shared humanity.