Free the Bears!

So I may have been a little dubious of the ‘free the bears’ day, thinking it might be some weird tourist focussed “volunteering” with the bears kinda situation, and in a way it was, but in a way I liked, I guess.

We got picked up in the morning by some of the keepers (and their dog Rosie! so nice to play with a puppie) and one other aussie girl and drove out to the sanctuary. It is in 25000ish hectares of protected forest, which also has enclosures run by the government for lots of other animals, monkeys, birds, elephants, lions etc. The bear section is run by the ‘free the bears’ charity which was founded by an Australian woman called Mary who saw something about bear bile farming on TV and decided to do something about it, eventually leading to the organisation today which has a few sanctuary’s across south east asia for bears rescued from bile farms, resteraunts (bear paw soup), dancing bears and those from the exotic pet trade.

                                                   

Currently they can’t re-release the bears as poachers trapped the only bears that they tried to release and one of the bears died of it’s injuries.

The aim of the “volunteer” program seems to be mainly to educate the “volunteers” about what free the bears does and to let us do a few activities related to the bears (like preparing feed balls, and hiding scatterfeed in the bears enclosures for them. It was pretty fun! I liked climbing around the enclosure hiding food and then watching them find it… but I think mainly this post should be cute bear pics so…

                                              delicious bear snacks...

             Keda throwing our newly made snacks to the bears!

                          Bear checking out the snacks :)

                                                      

I also got into a fight with a monkey! we were near the cage of these massive pythons and a friendly monkey came over to say hi, turns out the monkey was a little over friendly and some of the other people ran off screaming... I thought that the monkey would back off, me being much larger and scarier then it but apparently not, so I hissed at feinted towards it and it hissed and feinted towards me until I realised I was trapped between the python cage and a big rock... and the monkey was still hissing and making to attack me (I realise I am probably about to get bitten by said monkey and briefly regret not having got a rabies shot) and then one of the friendly people starts pegging sticks at the monkey until it backs off. My pride took a bit of a knock at loosing a battle of will with a monkey!

 

 

 

 hiding food for the scatterfeed

 

 

The bears finding the food we hid :)

 

And yea, this happened...

Choeng Ek Killing fields and S21 prison

*this could be triggering* – It’s about the Khmer rouge, torture, murder and genocide - I am so sorry if these things have touched your life.

We visited Cheong Ek Killing fields near Phnom Penh, and S21 the torture prison in Phnom Penh. It was an intense experience, and I’m not sure I can really articulate or understand the experience, but I will try to share how I felt.

The Killing fields when we got there were felt peaceful, there were tree’s and grass and butterflies flying around, It was fairly quiet. We got the headsets that tell you about the different parts of the site and walked around the area listening to the audioguide.

It’s so hard for me to imagine in anyway what happened there, especially to relate a site that felt so peaceful to such cruelty and suffering.

 I can’t relate to the experience in any way and I think I am a very experiential person or learner. To imagine what happened I feel like I use a part of my brain that imagines the imagery of a story I read.

Having been lucky enough to never really have had my life or the life of my family, friends, loved one’s threatened, I just cannot understand how horrific it must have felt, and still be for the people who suffered under the Khmer rouge, My sister realised while we were there that the regime occurred within her lifetime, so all of the people her age and older had lived through it. It is so recent still, It almost amazes me to see so many people living their lives in what looks like normality and to know that there must still be such trauma and pain present.

I like to believe that people are good, to give them the benefit of the doubt, despite knowing in my head that people commit awful atrocities against each other, I just can’t reconcile this with the truth that these sort of things happen everywhere and often, and often go unreported/noticed/mourned. I know I am lucky to be so naïve, to never have been faced with what a person can do to another.

How  can humanity encase such beauty, wonder, generosity and love and also such violence hatred, and brutality? And I suspect it’s not even always clear cut the differences, I don’t like to think of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people, I think I have elements of both as do most people I suspect.  Are the people who worked in the Khmer rouge messed up, ill, evil, or were they terrified of what would happen to them if they didn’t obey? In which case who masterminded it? Are there single people to blame like Pol Pot, or Hitler who somehow made millions of people kill, and terrorise millions of others?

 Part of me doesn’t want to understand that brutality in a real sense.

We also visited the torture prison S21.

I don’t think I want to write about it. It was awful, people being absolutely destroyed in every sense of the word. It just makes me question how I see us human beings, I don’t know if I can fit these things into my worldview and still be hopeful and believe in myself and other people.

But does that disrespect the memory and experience of the millions of people throughout the world who have been faced with this sort of violence and terror firsthand?

I have no answers, this is my attempt to share how It felt.

 

 

Leaving the country.

So It felt pretty weird to be able to go so quickly form one life, home, country, culture etc. to the next in just 8 hours, I think especially as I had been so focused and wrapped up in life back home that I had barely thought about the fact that I was soon leaving the country without a return date!

One minute I was hanging out with the people I love and care about, so entrenched in the culture I'v been brought up in and share to varying degree's with the people around me and now I am in a country where I understand so little of the culture, the assumptions I feel I can make at home when I know that I can at least assume a shared country and gone, I don't know how to read peoples behaviour, facial expressions etc. I am a bit in the dark about what's appropriate, or how to be the person I want to be, how to relate to people in a polite respectful way. I think I will have a lot of learning to do. and in the meantime I will do my best with what I do know.

I also feel much more relaxed travelling now then I have in the past, I am not overthinking things so much, just trying to be open and willing to learn and to pick up on things when I can.

We (my sister Keda and I) stayed one night in Singapore with our brother Tim and his wife Jen. It was lovely to be back in Singapore, I love the food! and little India and getting to hang out with Tim and Jen who we don't see much of.

I also love the way that when I land in a new country I notice how it smells different, I loved getting off the plane and smelling Singapore! and the smell of Tim and Jen's place, I love the way smells can evoke such feelings and memories.

It was a perfect stop-over in Singapore, Thanks so much Tim and Jen!!

The next day we flew to Phnom Penh, and headed into the city. I am happy to be here. Have to write more on the next few days later...

i used to be so arty

now i have a full time job. i feel like i am getting more hard arsed, more eat-work-sleep just fit in, do they things they tell ya n whatever. i dunno, i see my friends and family less, i dont see my lover at all but i talk to her every day. i dunno. i dont even feel worried, its just a change i know i would have hated to see in myself, and i guess i also do hope i spin out and have amazing adventures and break out of all these structures and stuff. but also. i'm fairly happy here, eating, dworking, sleeping, playing when i can, loving when i do, i think the work just takes up so much of my head i can't undo it. i dunno, ha, what a train of thought. trains gunna crash into a pillow. X g'nite cyberspace

learning out loud

Sometimes I wish I didn’t learn quite so out loud, with tear streaked face and an obvious ache. But when it comes down to it I am also glad that It still messes me, that im not always in control. I don’t want to be able to answer everything I don’t want to be able to box all my experiences without a bit of trouble. It feels more realistic to me to not have the answers. On the odd occasion I grin at the floundering.

patch

This morning I wake up smeared across our suburbs, saliva and hands in each others pockets, our pictures on each others walls, a crick neck from this mess of people and bedding. I stumble morningly into your housemates and we share that awkward moment of well meaning and not quite having our people antenna’s on yet. Coffee on the pavement and shoes on. Awake is what they call it but I am fog yawning and stretching. We congregate in lumps of shared coffee and that gentle unsurity about what it means to be who we are and just how to do it.
Later it is sharing food and giggling trying to do headstands on the train, It is chalk and spraypaint and running, it is epic bike rides and rooftop conversations.
And occasionally it is bleeding lips and faces smeared with sadness, arms like thin jumpers wrapped round each other to try and contain a whale of ache. It is jittering limbs and attempts to distract.
Now it is reflection and words for the page and the inevitable rolls out ‘thank you, thank you so much for not letting me go just yet’

hung up on ok

At 5:30pm ‘c-u-lunk’ we both hung up. I heard you and then followed suit. What preceded was a non-fussed exchange of ‘see-ya’ and ‘bye’. The kind that is confident in its lack of longevity despite any plans to the otherwise. We mentioned some ribbons of time, that could end in several places: my house, your house, breakfast, dinner, writing essays together.
I don’t know if either of us will brave the rain, will decide that we can study together, despite quite firmly confirmed knowledge that we can’t. I revel in the not knowing, the concept expands and I apply it to everything I can think of, because I don’t really know anything. There is an assumption that I will get up and pee soon, but it could be wrong, there is an assumption that I will finish my degree and be a nurse next year, but really, who knows, maybe I will instead decide to live in a coal power station with my friends, or travel around with a tape recorder and a book and a camera. Or fall asleep and never ever wake up again.
The creeping possibilities need to stay about I think, if I am to remain un-ashen in my cheeks and the trills of thoughts speeding through my circuitry. It’s a reason I need these phone times. These splattering shakes of thought and possibility, never really needing to be coupled with plans, but more as reminders and inspirers, as jumpstarts for idea’s that will curve through like water eroding rock. That will ensure the rock does not win me over, till I am under it [Capitalist. Consumerist. Disconnected. Undone. Unfun.]