Unintended Consequences

One of the more readily apparent human rights issues in Cambodia is the culture of child labor. In a country where the average annual income for a family of six is $400, the potential extra income that a child can provide is exceedingly valuable. Selling everything from bootleg books, to postcard packets, to friendship bracelets, young children roam Cambodia’s streets and beaches touting their wares. They range in age from around 5 to 13, and they are undeniably adorable. Throughout our trip, we found makeshift signs and lamented poster from children’s rights NGOs that warned travelers not to buy from child vendors, no matter how cute or persistent. Our patronage would just further affirm the kids’ ability to earn money, and would keep them on the streets, out of school, and vulnerable to assault or kidnapping.

It was difficult not to fall for their gimmicks. The children selling postcard packets would follow us down quiet streets and across picturesque temple grounds, counting out the cards in a rapid succession of various Romance languages. “You want postcards? I give you 10 for $1. See? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis...” Our polite declines would invariably be followed by, “You change your mind, you buy from me, okay?” It was obvious that they had been strategically taught to say pertinent phrases in different languages that catered to their wide diversity of clientele.

Sihanoukville, with its constant stream of wealthy revelers and foreign travelers, was a hot spot for child vendors. They roamed the beaches from sunrise until late into the night, touting bundles of brightly colored friendship bracelets and encouraging beachgoers to purchase strands to match their multicolored bikinis and Beer Lao tank tops.

A week into our travels, Meghna and I had thus far successfully heeded the warnings not to give child vendors our money. One particular evening, we had set up shop at a beachfront restaurant in Sihanoukville to watch the sunset and enjoy a few beers.  I’d brought along a deck of cards to pass the time. We’d been lounging for about an hour when a young boy approached us.

“You want bracelet? I give you one for one dollar.”

“No, thank you.” Our polite dismissals were well-rehearsed at this point.

The boy pressed on. “Many colors. You want bracelets?”

Cue the same tight lipped headshake that worked so well to deter vendors elsewhere. He’d probably leave after a second failed attempt.

That was when the boy noticed my deck of cards resting idly on our table. Casting his bundle of bracelets carelessly onto the sand, he dropped to his knees and started dealing the cards out to us.

Enchanted by his innocence, we decided to humor him. The game was some sort of rule-less gin rummy, and we were moved by the young boy’s simple desire to play children’s games instead of hawking wares. Despite the fact that he would sporadically throw us a coy, gimmicky wink as he positioned the cards around the table (a ploy obviously learned as a way to charm his customers) we wanted to believe that, fundamentally, this was a child just wanting to be a child.

Well, we fell for it. After about 20 minutes of throwing cards around playfully and humoring the boy as he tried to explain the rules of his game through the shrouds of language barriers, Meghna and I agreed that we should buy a few friendship bracelets from our new playmate.

What happened next was really just an afterthought on my part. After carefully selecting the perfect design and handing over my dinero, I thought it would be a nice gesture to give the boy my deck of cards. Why not give a gift that helps him recapture his youth? Why not do my small part to reverse the robbery of childhood that Cambodia’s child labor market exacted upon its victims?

“For you.” I smiled, setting the deck carefully in his hand. The boy’s eyes widened in unadulterated excitement as he ran his fingers across the ridges of the cards and slid them into his satchel. With a quick thank you, he was off to his next table of potential customers.  I sat back, feeling good about the gift of youth I’d just bestowed upon the young boy.

At this point, the sun had nestled down beneath the horizon, and we were enjoying one final beer before heading out. Just as we were about to pack up, the little boy came running back to us in obvious distress. He threw the deck onto our table, the cards dispersing in all directions.

What was going on?

The little boy broke into a torrent of agitated Khmer, trying to explain to us what had happened. With his English limited to “you want bracelet?” and our Khmer limited to “Akun” (thank you) we weren’t getting very far in understanding his distress. Finally, the boy resorted to a twisted game of Charades, mimicking the motions of being beaten.

We finally understood that the boy had been scolded and possibly beaten for possessing the deck of cards. With his leader probably assuming that the boy had stolen them from a customer, he had been ordered to return the deck. It was an ironic twist; the gift of one game was returned in form of another “game” to demonstrate mistreatment.

Sheepishly picking up the scattered cards, I tried to process my actions’ unintended consequences. My attempt to challenge the loss of innocence that child labor produces had, in actuality, created further pain for someone already victimized by an oppressive and entrenched system of abuse.

Unfortunately this is a common habit that we Westerners bring to our interactions with foreign populations. Much like the Vietnam War or even the War in Iraq, our moralistic belief that we should intervene to change “oppressive” systems, in many cases, has actually further exacerbated the very situations we were trying to rectify. My experience with the young bracelet seller in Cambodia was a very unsettling personification of the important question that Americans still wrestle with today. In what situations is inaction better than action?

You can't really understand a country until you've experienced its hospital system

This is what I kept trying to tell myself as my tuk-tuk driver careened through traffic and zigzagged past streetside food stalls on our way to the Sihanoukville Public Hospital.

 The morning had started off uneventfully enough. It was our second morning in Sihanoukville, the premier backpacker's beach town on the Cambodian coast. I'd woken up earlier than Meghna and decided to hit the beach while the prime beach chairs and umbrellas were still relatively abundant.

Armed with my Kindle and a vat of newly purchased SPF 50 sunscreen, I slipped out of the hotel and headed out onto the white sands. It had been about 5 days since my bike ride in Kep left my arms hopelessly burned. After a few days of restless nights and painful massages, I thought I was finally in the clear. My arms had darkened to a deep amber brown, and I was feeling pretty satisfied with the tan I was cultivating. Not to tempt fate, however, I settled down under the safety of a bright blue umbrella, lathered on the sunscreen for good measure, and eased into the comfy brown wicker beach chair. The plan was get some reading in before Meghna joined me, and then spend the rest of the day exploring the coastline and perhaps heading toward Sihanoukville's less trafficked beaches for some more peaceful scenery.

I should have known better than to expect things to go as planned.


About 20 minutes into my lounging, I got a craving for a smoothie to relieve the heat.

 Hmm, maybe I'll order a mango smoothie. I wonder where the server is. Maybe I should raise my hand to get his atten.......What the?!?!

I sat up with a start, my whole body rigid, and stared in horror at my right arm. From knuckle to shoulder, it was mysteriously and suddenly covered in an explosion of water blisters: big, small, and every size in between. I jerked my other arm over to run my fingers along the scaly bumps, only to discover in horror that my other arm was suddenly covered with identical patterns of water blisters, as well.

Oh my god, I am a monster.

I wasn't really thinking clearly, only to the extent that I knew I had to get inside as quickly as possible. My reptile arms grabbed up my effects and I started bolting for the street.

As I made my escape from the evil outdoors, the restaurant manager, who owned the chair I'd been using, ran out of his building and started chasing me. "You didn't buy anything! You use my chair you must buy!"

I was not in the mood to contribute to Cambodia's economy in that moment. In a dramatic flair, I brandished my bubbly arms in his direction and said, "Look at what has happened to me!" The manager's face contorted into a disgusted expression of horror, and he waved me on.

To get that reaction from someone who works on a beach and probably sees sunburns all time...not all that comforting, I thought to myself as I scurried back to the hotel. Maybe someone else will have seen this kind of a situation before and will know what to do.

Nope. My pitiful appendages got the same reaction from Meghna and from the hotel manager. 

"What should I do?" I asked the hotel manager, feeling increasingly helpless--both in regards to what was happening to my body, and how to treat it in a completely foreign context.

"Go to the hospital, they might know. I will get you a tuk-tuk." They might know? You're not exactly giving me a vote of confidence, buddy.

So, anyway, that brings me to where we began, in the back of a tuk-tuk, with exploding arms, headed for one of Cambodia's public hospitals.

 I'm never venturing into the light of day again, I vowed to myself as we turned the last corner toward the hospital.

We rolled up to what looked like an auto repair shop, a small building with an open-air front that was partitioned into two sections. The first was labeled "Recovery Room" and was filled with rows of cots, the majority of which were occupied by patients hooked up to various pieces of equipment and in various stages of consciousness.

 So much for privacy.

The second area was sectioned off into a series of private "consultation rooms." Given my hunch that consultation preceded recovery, I headed over to that section of the building and was greeted by three women sporting large badges that read "Pharmacy. We Can Help You." Sounded like a good place to start.

"I have a sunburn. I need to know what to do." I extended my arms. Cue the same disgusted and confused looks. This was beginning to be a pattern.

"You need to see a doctor. Please have a seat in the waiting room and he will come to you."

The waiting room turned out to be populated entirely by foreigners, all with various injuries sustained from various activities the night before. Sihanoukville has a reputation for sporting a pretty big party scene, and the nights can be fairly unkind to travelers who are in a strange place and have had one too many Angkor Beers.

 I settled down between a woman with a terribly swollen ankle and a young man with a bandage wrapped around his calf.

Let the battle wound comparisons begin.

Turns out the woman missed a step while stumbling home from the bars the night before, had taken a nasty tumble, and was now probably facing a broken ankle. The man had been bitten "by some animal" while he was partying on the beach in the dark. Even though he couldn't see exactly what bit him, the general consensus around the waiting room was that it was probably a dog. Rabies was, of course, a concern. But, my affliction took the cake. Unlike a creature bite or a drunken tumble, my exploding arms defied logic. Excellent, I have the dubious honor of "Weirdest Injury at the Sihanoukville Public Hospital."

As much as I enjoyed the attention from my fellow Sihanoukville victims, I was relieved finally to be summoned into the consultation room for a meeting with the doctor. I evaluated the main man's certifications and accolades, which were ceremoniously fastened to the walls with Hello Kitty hooks and Smiley Face pins.

After a suitable amount of waiting, the doctor entered with his entourage of pharmacists. Brandishing a flash light, he had me lay down on the examination table. Shining the flashlight across my bumps (a somewhat unnecessary move by my measures, as the room was flooded with natural light), he referenced a sheet of paper densely packed with Khmer writing, and said triumphantly, "It's a burn!"

Hmm...yes, yes it is.

"Okay, that will be $20."

 ....

 Flush with my Andrew Jackson, the doctor prescribed a French cream called Biafine and told me that it was very rare and I would have to go to a special pharmacy to retrieve it.

"How do I get there?"

"Go to the Big Monkey." With those cryptic instructions, the doctor did an about-turn and headed back out into the waiting room to summon his next patient. (Hopefully it was the possible rabies victim, that one seemed pretty serious).

Not at all sure where this "Big Monkey" was hanging out, or even whether it was a real monkey, or a building, or a statue, or just a figure of speech, I was once again left to the good graces of my tuk-tuk driver to take me to salvation. As is generally the case with my interactions with locals while traveling, my tuk-tuk driver did right by me. He took me on an additional 15 minute ride, at no extra cost, to retrieve my special cream and delivered me back to my hotel, where I carefully applied my French miracle cream and hoped for the best.

Long story short, every day, for about 5 days, without fail, my arms would erupt into a patch of water blisters from my knuckles to my shoulders. Then, every night, the blisters would fade away. It was like some strange reverse werewolf transformation.

I'm not too sure if my venture out to the Public Hospital was helpful in the end, but it certainly did give me peace of mind to know that I was checked out by someone better versed in physical reactions that I am. Even if those certifications are encased in Hello Kitty frames.

(I contemplated including a picture of my arms for illustration's sake, but, in the end, figured it was more appropriate for me to leave it to the imagination).