While staying in Phnom Penh, I was introduced to a woman named Miriam, an American expat who had relocated to Cambodia’s capital to work as a teacher. Miriam was also a woman with a cause, and her cause was saving Sambo, a much-loved resident of Phnom Penh. Sambo is a temple elephant, beloved by the locals and a veritable institution in this city.
Sambo lived in two temples—one during the day and one at night. This joint custody arrangement meant that Sambo had to travel down the city’s most heavily trafficked artery twice a day, schlepping on the scorching pavement, dodging motorbikes.
Miriam’s goal was to raise money for a new nightly shelter at the daytime temple that would eliminate the need for Sambo to take his evening stroll down Main Street. During dinner one night, we discussed Miriam’s options for raising money.
I kept suggesting that Sambo give up his urban lifestyle and retire to the countryside to live out his days in peace at an elephant sanctuary like the one I had just visited in northern Laos. But Miriam wouldn’t hear of it, and neither would the population of Phnom Penh that loved him so.
So I deferred to my host and public opinion on the matter of Sambo, offering several fundraising strategies that Miriam could deploy among her expat friends. But in truth, my heart wasn’t really into it. I was cringing instead at the memory of Sambo weaving in and out of the cars during the city’s raging rush hour.
During our meal, Miriam told me about her friend Reaksmey, who was based in the Cambodian city of Battambang and working for a nonprofit called Phare Ponleu Selpak (PPS).
Translated as “the brightness of art,” Phare Ponleu Selpak harnesses the healing power of art and theater to help children cope with traumatic experiences. PPS is best known for its traveling circus. Now this is a mission I could get behind!
So I decided to travel to Battambang. Nabbing a one-way ticket on a local delivery boat, I set sail on the Tonlé Sap. Crammed to capacity, I grabbed my life vest (just kidding—there are no life vests!) and promptly settled on the boat’s roof, where I remained for most of the trip. By this point, I was a seasoned traveler in Southeast Asia and knew the safest place was on top, which offered the possibility to jump clear if the boat started to sink.
By midday, the sun was scorching, so I used my umbrella for a bit of shade. I listened to music and watched the floating river villages of Cambodia drift past. It was fascinating to get a glimpse of life on the Tonlé Sap River, with schools, houses, and shops all bobbing in our wake.
Besides hauling cargo and passengers, the boat also served as the local mail delivery system, and people would eagerly paddle out to us in an assortment of small craft to collect packages and mail letters.
The children living in the floating villages were excited to see the boat slide by, waving and yelling out greetings. Yet as we made our way inland, the houses on the banks grew noticeably poorer.
After a few hours, I began to see the effects of dire poverty etched on people’s faces. The children were still playful, but the adults in this part of the country stared with angry eyes. And of course, the people living here were not particularly keen for us passengers to observe their hard-scrabble lives.
In the late afternoon and at the threat of rain, I climbed inside and rejoined my fellow travelers. For the next two hours, a tropical storm pelted the small boat, with droplets leaking in from the roof and river water seeping in from the hull. I squeezed into a seat next to a young man who was missing most of his hands.
At the time, I didn’t think about it. In retrospect, I believe he was suffering from Hansen’s disease (leprosy), which I learned about during my trip to the former leper colony in Culion, Philippines.
The young man and I exchanged pleasantries, mostly through friendly gestures, nods, and smiles. He showed me a turtle peeking out of his bag. At first I thought it was an enormous snake and almost peed my pants, but then I noticed the shell.
When he uncovered his precious cargo, the tourists behind us kept cooing at his pet. But I knew better. That large turtle wasn’t a pet he was transporting to his family, but dinner to be feasted upon later that night. The turtle, suffering in his cardboard box, had only hours left to live.
After more than ten hours on the boat, we arrived. In the waning light, I flagged a driver who helped load my luggage. Balancing my huge suitcase on his head, he skillfully walked the narrow wooden plank leading to shore. Before I knew it, he had whisked me away into his tuk-tuk, and we were speedily splashing through puddles along the muddy road.
I arrived at the guesthouse wet, tired, and famished (the bread and cheese I had bought for the day trip had turned out to be moldy). After a quick shower, I headed right to the hotel restaurant. As the waiter and I bantered, I told him I was there to see the circus. He informed me that the circus only performs one night a week, and tonight was my lucky night. I scarfed my meal, bought a ticket, and arranged a ride. I was going to the circus!
This was no ordinary circus. The PPS spectacle was conceived in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. With an original cast of eight students, a volunteer art teacher created the local theater production to help young refugees cope with their childhoods in the rough refugee center.
But I didn’t yet know this backstory when I eagerly took my seat in the bleachers. I was here to see a circus, and anticipated the usual antics. What I saw was anything but conventional.
A series of theatrical acts were performed, each portraying increasingly unsavory experiences. There were actors pantomiming acts of pedophilia. Clowns with exaggerated expressions, leering at the children. Jugglers tossing what appeared to be bombs. This slapstick was anything but silly. It was scary.
But the audience around me was howling with laughter. Filled with locals, more than half of the attendees were children, who were allowed to come to the circus for free. With the whole performance conducted in the local language, I tried to convince myself that I didn’t understand what was occurring under the Big Top. But I did.
The circus was formed to provide art therapy to troubled youth. The performance I was watching was a form of psychotherapy that encouraged creativity and self-expression as a way for children to deal with traumatic experiences. So I was eating popcorn and witnessing the memory of a young girl’s assault at the hands of a lecherous uncle. It was all I could do not to gag.
As the performance progressed, it continued to tackle the all-too-real experiences of these young Cambodian children. The jugglers were indeed parodying the proliferation of unexploded land mines throughout the country, and the clowning around addressed issues of drug addiction, the prevalence of child prostitution, and the reality of cross-border human trafficking.
The young actors, often with first-hand experience of the scenes they performed, are helping to warn others of the dangers that prey upon vulnerable youth. By performing throughout the Cambodian countryside at schools, hospitals, and markets, the circus performers create awareness and dialogue about the harsh reality for far too many Cambodian kids.
After I got home that night, I tried to digest all I had seen that day. I lay awake, upset as I recalled the children in the audience laughing at the acting out of child sexual assault and the amputation of arms and legs from unexploded bombs.
Still trying to wrap my mind around the scenes played by children on the stage, I was to encounter yet more real-life drama later that week. The existence of unexploded devices is tragically all too commonplace in Southeast Asia. While traveling to Siem Reap to see the unbelievably astounding ancient Cambodian city of Angkor Wat, I allocated an afternoon to visit the Cambodian Land Mine Museum and Relief Facility.
The museum was founded by Aki Ra, one of thousands of former soldiers forced to serve in the Khmer Rouge army. Drafted at age ten, Aki Ra planted tens of thousands of land mines throughout the Cambodian countryside. As he grew into a teenager, he developed a specialty as an explosives expert, known for his calm demeanor and steady hands.
As he entered adulthood, Aki Ra escaped from the Khmer Rouge and used his training and knowledge of where the bombs were buried to begin detonating and clearing landmines. For several decades, he has been removing landmines—more than 50,000 so far.
In addition to removing the mines he and his fellow child soldiers planted, Aki Ra started the Land Mine Museum to tell his personal story and inform the public about the horrors of landmines and the explosive remnants of Cambodia’s civil war.
The Relief Facility cares for forty children and adults, victims who have been wounded, handicapped, or orphaned because of exploding mines. I stayed for more than three hours at the museum, trying to understand the depth of this problem and learn about myriad explosive devices.
One of the most informative exhibits was a mock mine field that teaches visitors how to avoid stepping on mines. For instance, when walking off-road, avoid land mines by stepping on places where they can’t be easily planted, such as large rocks, dense clumps of grass, or the roots of larger trees.
Aki Ra is appropriately very protective of the children under his care, so I didn’t meet them, but I could help the children by providing basic necessities. While I was visiting the museum, I noticed a wish list tacked to the wall. On the list was a request for thirty pairs of flip-flops for the Facility’s children. For $75, I was able to purchase a new pair of rubber sandals for each child. Truly, this was the least I could do.
My trips to the circus and the landmine museum made me think about how young many of the victims in Cambodia are. The preteen girls who are forced into prostitution to help support their families. The young boys who lose a limb as they run into a rice field to retrieve a ball.
I mourned for the lost innocence of these children. I mourned for the fact that they were not growing up in a safe environment and how we, living in more developed, less desperate countries, often take so much for granted.
This was a slice of humble pie à la mode. 🦋
Have you witnessed vulnerable beings (animals and children) in dire circumstances? How did it affect you? What do you think is the best way to help alleviate their suffering?
⭐ An Adventure A Week is a serial based on my autobiography “Adventures Of A Nomad: 30 Inspirational Stories.” You can read the essays in order (or not). Can’t wait for the next installment? Get the book.
This is the last in the series based on the emotion of humility. Read the others here:
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Christened “Wander Woman” by National Geographic, Erin Michelson is a professional speaker and author of the Nomad Life™ series of travel books and guides, including the #1-ranked “Explore the World with Nomads.”
Well, that's a serving of reality for us to digest. Thanks for sharing the circus experience. I visited the Land Mine Museum about 14 years ago and would recommend it to anyone visiting the area.
Whoa, that circus. I learned a lot from your explanation, thank you!