Intestinal Fortitude.

Here is the latest recipient of the Coolest Kid of the Week award, which I award periodically when photographing children in third world countries. He was quite the camera hog yesterday, but I don't blame him. I would do the same if I were in his shoes (or lack thereof). The sores all over his skin do nothing to darken his smile, nor are they enough to make him at all self-conscious when asking me to take his photo over and over and over again, and then calling his buds to join him. You wonder about his life, though, and what sort of a future, if any, he will have.

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For those unaware, I had been planning on moving in with a Cambodian family this week, until they were kind enough to decide last week that it wouldn't work because they were moving to a smaller house.

I heard about a flat with some young foreigners in the area of the Russian Market across town, so I went to check it out on Saturday. The part of town where I am now staying is almost completely residential, and many of these are homes of government officials, so there are not many things to do nearby. The Russian Market area, however, Toul Tom Poung as they call it, is bustling with shops, restaurants, cafes, and well, the market. So anything I could ever need or want would be right outside my doorstep. The vacant room in the flat is on the third floor, and then up another flight of stairs, through the neighbor's flat, is a rooftop terrace - a veranda, one might say - complete with plants, chairs, hammocks, a breeze, and a fourth-floor view of the city. The place was perfect. Except for one small detail: the other three in the flat are French women. We would have each had our own separate space, so it wouldn't have been a problem, but I know it could appear shady, so I find myself back at the drawing board.

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Tomorrow I head up to a town on the Thai border to get footage and photos of street kids. Geof and his wife have adopted many Cambodian kids and one of these grew up as a street kid in this border town. In March, Geof will be speaking at Lake Avenue in Pasadena, CA and Calvary Church in Lancaster (woot woot!), so this footage will accompany his presentation on the very grim and important issue of human trafficking. I am crossing my fingers that our filming will take us into Thailand, adding one more stamp to my passport. At any rate, it should make for some stellar photos and footage. Wikitravel.org, incidentally, has this to say about the town: "Poipet more or less rhymes with toilet, and this caustic observation is, sadly, true. Poipet is a miserable huddle of touts, beggars, thieves and dodgy casinos for daytripping Thais, and spending any more time than absolutely necessary is not recommended."

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My mom has asked about my health a few times, and I'm sure all of you are dying to know but just don't feel comfortable asking because you are not my mother. So here it is: I am pleased to tell you I have had fairly remarkable intestinal fortitude thus far. Most times, number twos are more like one and a halfs, but the stomach feels normal, so no complaints. I did throw up a few weeks ago for the first time in years but this was due to taking my malaria pill first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. I have since made sure to take the pill following my breakfast of bread and Starbucks coffee (courtesy of a never-used French press coffee maker in the Amstutz residence and a bag of coffee given some months ago by some well-meaning Americans to a family of tea drinkers).

Dump.

Today was day two of interviews for the videos I'm working on. We filmed this morning at a house church that meets at the garbage dump. The road at the entrance to the place was covered with a sort of slushy mud that made you wonder if there were more ingredients involved than the normal dirt and water combo. Riding through this stuff on a moto was quite the experience.

As I filmed the cell church gathering in a small wooden shack, several young kids were all over me, each vying for the once-in-a-lifetime chance to get a look at the LCD screen. I think this sort of thing is what G.K. Chesterton was getting at when he said that "part of God's infinity is manifested in a little child's propensity to exult in the monotonous."

It is sort of enviable, you know, seeing these kids at the garbage dump, running around half-naked, having a good time, unaware that (as far as we are concerned) they are missing out on so much. It almost makes you wonder if they are better off without all the junk that fills our lives and passes for things we need. But of course, the living conditions at the dump are deplorable, and the kids who live here are some of the most vulnerable in the country. They are trapped in destructive (and virtually inescapable) cycles from the moment they are born, whether it's disease or the lack of access to education or any of the myriad other problems they face. They are destined to live lives very much like their parents, and in most cases, this does not give them much to hope for.

This is why it is so encouraging to meet with believers in this community, a solitary glimmer of hope, and to see living proof that God is at work, drawing people to Himself, transforming them, and sending them out to let their neighbors know about the hope they have even though their lives also remain quite difficult.

This is a photo I took in January of the same garbage dump.

Looking down the street from the house church.

This is the pastor praying for those in his congregation who are sick.

This guy and his family scrounge around for discarded sandals in the piles of trash and somehow manage to find matching pairs, and then spruce them up to be resold.

Rodeo.

One of my major undertakings while here is to put together a couple of videos for the Hope program, one in Khmer and the other in English, and both are rather involved. Today I did the first ten interviews for the project, thanks to a very trusty translator who made my job possible.

To get to our location this morning I hopped on the back of a staff moto, along with three cameras and a tripod. We then headed out into a slum community on the outskirts of Phnom Penh where volunteers and staff from the Hope program have been working for the past couple of years. The roads in this neighborhood are clearly not of highest priority, and the ride felt a lot like practicing for the rodeo.

Filming interviews around here involves about as many variables as an Algebra Two textbook. You never know if equipment will cooperate, if the lighting will be sufficient, if the interviewee will speak loudly enough, if everyone else will be quiet enough, and so on. Variables galore. Today all variables showed their ugly faces. We asked those off camera to keep quiet, and they did until we started filming and then a woman would reprimand her child - out loud - for making noise while we were filming. Then a naked kid would walk across the picture and the interviewee would not seem to notice and would continue on, relaying her gripping testimony about AIDS and contemplating suicide before finding hope in Jesus, all the while I am lamenting the fact that none of the footage will be usable. Maybe I need to be more assertive by laying down the law, but I guess I find it difficult to do so, because the naked kid needs to get where he is going and the woman making a ruckus by frying up the fish in the background needs to feed her family, and it is hard to convince them, I suppose, that filming interviews might actually serve a purpose as well.