Yesterday morning I woke up, reluctantly, to the sound of the chanting monks in the Wat one street up from the White House. It was the same as every morning before. It will be the same every morning after. But this morning would be different. The volunteers and I, all of us, were up early this particular morning. We were headed into the countryside to see a drama performance organized by the hospital. It was meant to be an educational experience for the people in the villages to teach them about TB and the importance of immunizations. After two hours in the van, with a small oscillating fan at the front, moving from side to side barely cooling the people in the front, we arrived at Angkor Chom (the outreach clinic in the countryside). We all piled out as quickly as possible and were met by a wall of heat. We walked underneath the awning of the stage and sat down. I think the play was funny. All the Cambodians were laughing. I looked around at the other volunteers and saw their puzzled faces and that's when I began to laugh. The performance was in Khmer. None of us understood a word. Well, maybe one or two words at most. I got restless quickly and got up to photograph. I moved through the crowd, staying to the outside so as not to interrupt any one person's view of the event, and discovered some beautiful faces. I made my way to the shrine where the monks pray daily, and found a few young boys running around the perimeter. They spoke fairly good English and asked for a picture. I took a few and then would periodically show them the images from the monitor on the back of the camera. They would laugh and point at their friends' faces. We said goodbye and I moved on, stumbling along an interesting pack of women who seemed to be making concessions for the people attending the play. I watched them and took a few images. As I was looking through the view-finder, framing a shot, a large butterfly came and sat in the middle of the rectangle. It was amazing...
.....(mostly because I am a butterfly girl. I have a butterfly tattooed on my left wrist from a cross-country trip I took a year or so ago in the States. Butterflies are a kind of justification for me that I am in the right place, doing the right thing. Sometimes I would see them on my cross-country journeys and I would think, "I'm on the right path. I chose the right road to take. I will see something great on this road, otherwise, why would I see butterflies?). Also, a few weeks ago at a friend's house here in Cambodia, a butterfly came and landed right on my hand. It just sat there. That has never happened before. And I thought, "Of course. I'm here. I'm supposed to be here.".......
Okay, so enough with the sidebar.....after staring at the butterfly for a few moments and thinking about how wonderful it felt to be in the right place, the drama performance came to an end. The volunteers and I all piled back into the van and headed home to Siem Reap in time for lunch. After grabbing a bite, I went to pick up some prints I had made for the parents at the hospital. I made the short walk back to the hospital (although, it felt long because of the heat), walked through the gate and found my friend, Sokaan (another art therapist) in the hallway. She moved toward me, grabbed my arm, and asked me if I knew that Kanika had died this morning. Kanika was a girl that I had referred to as the "golden girl," because she always wore these two thick gold bracelets on her right arm. And, well, she was a Golden Girl. She had a beautiful face and the kindest eyes I'd ever seen. She sparkled.
She also had AIDS. She was withering away to nothing. I had taken a picture of her just a week before and given her mother the print a few days ago. And this afternoon I walked in to find out that she had died. It was strange somehow, to remember so clearly handing her the image of her own face just days before and realizing now that she was gone. And then I remembered the butterfly. I am in the right place. I'm glad I was here to know her, to have seen her face. I will always remember her that way....with those hopeful sparkling bracelets and her hair in braids....she will always be golden.
