Every glimpse happens through a lens. We see the life we live, and the world around us through the lens we’ve spent our life building. For a week in early 2011 – just after the Chinese New Year but before the Khmer New Year – we were given the chance to glimpse a different lens into the world.
Through this lens, the world is a colorful place of great beauty despite violent history. It’s a serene place of exquisite manners and hospitality. It’s a place that was once exceedingly wealthy, but is now desperately poor.
Out of this poverty rises stunning ingenuity, where a small motorbike becomes a tractor for a trailer-load of goods,
bicycles transport entire businesses, and impoverished orphans come together to build a silk manufacturing “mini-empire†using discarded wheels and components.
While we can’t change the fact that the lens through which we see the world was built by our Western upbringing, we were fortunate to allow a little distortion to that lens while we were guests. Through that modified lens we saw the tremendous beauty, kindness, and ingenuity that is Khmer.
Oh yea, and Math Season begins today…
