Wisdom

See this. It is Battambang town in northwestern Cambodia at a specific time in history. It is 1992.

Before Pol Pot times Battambang was a university town and those with a good education, those who were young students in those days romanticise it. I can understand. A river flows right through the heart of it. Many solid old Khmer buildings lend charm to the riverbank. Here and there are art deco additions, witness to the time as a French protectorate. More solid and more ancient than all of this are the brightly coloured, intricately decorated Buddhist temples. Wherever you live in Battambang you are close enough to hear the bells from the temples and the chanting of the monks.  

There once was an impressive Catholic Church as well, but the Khmer Rouge reduced it to a heap of rubble. I choose to pray in the mornings seated on the steps of Wat Kundung, the nearest temple to my home. With a Cambodian friend to interpret, an elderly monk conversed with me.  He spoke of wisdom and with wisdom.

I have the chance to go out to distant villages, many hours from the town, along the rough roads and dirt tracks. If I am to be of any use here at all it is important for me to try to understand the simple traditional lives of the village people. More that eighty percent of the Cambodian population live in villages. Can I take you there?

We have left Battambang town early, Ka driving the motor bike, steering deftly at almost full throttle, me behind him, astride the cushion at the back, holding on. Ka is invited to meet with leaders in a remote village, invited for the main meal of the day, invited to chat with them. We leave Battambang at seven; the main meal is at eleven.

Ka is jocular, friendly and committed to justice and to sharing. The climb the steps to this house on poles.  The heat is intense under the only tin roof in the village. If we were not special guests, we could have eaten in a thatch lean-to. I have learned to make gentle approaches as many in distant villages have not seen a ‘Barang’ before. I deal with the expected questions: ‘How old are you?’ ‘Where is your husband?’

The men of the village are delighted to see Ka. They hope for an update on Khmer Rouge incursions, he hopes to talk to them about human rights. I’m not at all sure that they expected a white skinned woman, a Barang.

While Ka launches into a serious conversation with the men, I go downstairs into the shade under the house where the women are cooking. They make space for me with no talk at all. They are busy, squatting on their heels, adjusting the heat from the charcoal fires under various cooking pots. Children gather to giggle and point at me. The women simply smile. I breathe in the fragrance of steamed rice as it simmers to complete absorption.

When all is ready the pots are carried up the stairs. We sit in a circle on a bamboo mat, the cooking pots are placed in the centre: rice; green vegetables; a few small fish from the rice fields. Those who have known starvation, as these people all have, concentrate on each mouthful of food as though it is a sacred. The food is eaten in silence. After the meal the elders retire to the hammocks under the house. I have already admitted to being fifty-three; this is where I belong. The life expectancy in this part of the world is fifty-four.

I enjoy the shade and the chatting until the man in the hammock next to mine asks, ‘Don’t you have human rights in Australia?’ ‘Why do you say that?’ I ask.

‘You are so old, and you are still working’ he says.

‘What am I supposed to do?’ I really want an answer.

‘Rock in the hammock and speak wisdom’ he replies in a tone that indicates ‘of course’.

‘What if I can’t think of any wisdom?’ I ask.

‘Just keep rocking’, he replies.

I look back across the decades, 1992 to 2024.

Suddenly, of all that I learned in my Buddhist connections this is the message that stands out.

I have reached the age where it may be very wise to rock in the hammock and keep rocking until there is a time to speak wisdom.  

Such a time is rare but sometimes it comes.

I call that grace.