Thursday, May 27, 2010

How one person can make a difference

Today while I was discovering the Temples of Angkor around Siem Reap, Cambodia, I made a detour to the Cambodia Landmine Museum (www.cambodialandminemuseum.org). What I thought was going to be a lesson on landmines, their history, their debilitating effects and ways for clearing them, turned out to be so much more...


The man who founded and runs the museum with his uncle and aunt, is named Aki Ra. When he was 10 years old he was taken by the Khmer Rouge (who killed his mother and father) and turned into a child soldier. He spent the next 13 years fighting, killing, maiming and - believe it or not - laying landmines all over Cambodia, first for the Khmer Rouge and later for the Vietnamese & Cambodian Armies. Some of the stories he has shared over the years can be read in the museum or seen in a video at the museum - they will chill you to the bone. He openly shares stories of killing and destruction during the civil war. However, he no longer personally shares those stories as he prefers to look to the future rather than dwell on the painful past.

In 1994 Aki Ra began working to de-mine the very areas he had previously mined. Because he had spent so many years working with mines he was excellent at detecting and defusing them. Word quickly spread about him and local villages would call him in to de-mine their fields. He kept all the mines he de-fused (30 000 plus) and eventually opened a small museum in Siem Reap to showcase his findings and raise awareness.

As word spread and money came in he got the help and funding to be an official NGO and opened a new museum as well as an orphanage/school for children affected by landmines. These children can also be seen in the video, as well as photos around the museum - scarred and limbless, but laughing, playing sports (soccer with crutches, for instance), swimming without arms and living life as children should. They also share their stories on the walls of the museum. These stories always begin with unimaginable horror and heartache, but all end with such hope for the future speaking of their new home, their chance at education and how happy they are now - as well as their love for Aki Ra and his family. It is beautiful to see the tangible effects this man is having on these children, as well as the work he is doing in his country.

As well as running this museum and orphanage and raising landmine awareness, Aki Ra still helps to de-mine areas in Cambodia - and when you see the videos you understand how dangerous this task is. He continues to risk his own safety in order to save the lives of people he will never know, and who will never even know they were saved, let alone by whom. Aki Ra is the definition of a hero, he is an inspiration, and he is proof that one person can make a difference.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Universality of Football (see: Soccer)

I have mentioned to people before in my travels how popular the game of football is around the world (and I call it football because that’s what it’s called by 5.5 billion people on this Earth – power in numbers, people). I’ve played football with locals on an island on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia at 3000m+ above sea level (none of whom spoke English). I’ve kicked the ball around in West Africa, and watched towns and villages shutdown in countries as remote as Burkina Faso when important football games come on TV - and I’m not talking fancy TVs here. I mean a 15 inch black and white TV pulled out onto the street and surrounded by plastic chairs for all the neighbourhood to watch. The conversation went something like this… “What’s that Chubabu (“white man” in West Africa)?”…. You want dinner? … Okay… After the game”. There is no other sport in the world that can do this on so many continents in so many languages.



Most recently the guy I met at the airport in Yangon (hence forth called Ilan) and I met a Buddhist scholar when visiting the Shwedagon Pagoda (google that). He invited us to the monastery he was studying at and when we went to visit him we noticed newspaper cut-outs on the walls of famous football players from the Premiership in England. This was obviously not something I expected to see in the dorm room of monks, but there were several pictures on the wall of Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool players. As we walked out of the monastery we ran into novice monks (8-12 years of age) playing football with a small plastic ball in their robes and bare feet in the 40 degree weather. Since Ilan is an avid football fan (he is from Israel but also loves the Premiership) we played for about an hour with the children. Ilan, myself and our Bamar friend (Bamar is the actual term for the majority of people from Myanmar – the British fucked it up, like everything else except football, and called it Burma) played against four gritty and determined 8-12 year olds who eventually beat us 13-11. The amazing thing? the kids come from hill tribes and can’t speak the Bamar language, so not even our Bamar friend could communicate with them. We just played the game as it is supposed to be played and shook hands/high-fived at the end. There is no need to talk when everyone knows exactly what is supposed to be done, and how it is supposed to be played. This is why football is the world’s sport.

To top it all off, tonight half of the men in the city I am in (Bago) are watching the Liverpool/Chelsea game live on TV. Every generator in town (power in Burma goes off as easily as a child flicks a light switch) must be on standby for this game tonight because the restaurants are packed with men hungry for their fill of European football. As I sat eating dinner and watching the locals watch the game (I personally don’t care for football), I started to think about how many people in how many countries on how many continents might people be watching the game? I mean, if most of Myanmar is watching it, are the astronauts in the ISS watching it? And would that make it truly Universal?