Swallowed Whole

I don’t know where to begin. I guess that happens when you let three months pass without a moment of reflection. Correction. Many moments of reflection. Little time to record.

It’s a rainy afternoon in Phnom Penh and my father and I just arrived back at our guesthouse after visiting the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge. Oddly, the visit seems to bring my experiences thus far, full circle.

I arrived in Singapore on May 4. It’s been almost 3 months exactly and yet in such little time it feels like ages have passed since I was sitting in my 12th floor office in downtown Vancouver, drafting contracts, preparing chambers applications, and feigning as much professionalism as I could muster.

The routine that I had established in Vancouver: work – gym – work – yoga – weekend – work – friends – work – family – work (as dazzling as it sounds) – quickly became a relic of the past when I arrived in Asia. I became a student again and with that fell upon me all the responsibilities of a foreign student – and as trivial as they may sound, they consumed me. I spent the first few weeks arranging my student visa, my accomodation, my phone, my computer. I spent little time exploring and was beginning to doubt there being any excitement in my new life.

But the excitement stealthily surrounded me and seems to continue to surround me in quiet anticipation.

What could be so exciting?

The people – my program is full of young people from all over the world representing every continent and region. The diversity of perspectives shows itself in so many ways and the beauty in diversity is omnipresent. Since it’s a small program, friendships quickly formed. In our second weekend here, 7 of us made a trip to Ho Chi Minh (or Saigon as most Vietnamese still call it) – there was me, (the sole Canadian in the program), 1 French, 1 Indian, 1 Filipino, 2 Italian and 1 German. We hardly knew eachother but somehow we all clicked well enough to spend 4 days together, virtually inseparable. And having travelled in groups before, I know how rare it is to travel backpacker-style with even your best friends – without conflict or dispute. But somehow, we enjoyed eachother’s company so much we didn’t even seek isolation from one another at any point. All of which made me realize how quickly human relationships and bonds can form.

As I said before arriving – so much can happen in a year, and it had only been 2 weeks at that point. The uncertainty of what lay ahead, and its grandeur, became very real in the first few weeks of the program.

What else?

The classes – there has never been a point in my 8 years of post-graduate experience, that I have been able to truly immerse myself in studying everything that I am so passionate about. There seemed always to be some constraint – whether it was getting into law school and meeting the requirements for an undergraduate degree, or meeting the requirements of a law degree and feeling compelled to follow the black letter line of the law. But here, I am truly immersed. And what’s more – is that, during the NYU portion of the program being taught this summer – I have benefitted from the instruction of people who are leaders in their field and who, for the most part, have perspectives and views that are similarly aligned so as to reinforce the sense of purpose and mode of reasoning that I’m developing. Which is not to say that there isn’t debate or questions that have been left unanswered – but, there’s comfort in knowing I’m not crazy.

The region – as I said, I was able to travel to Vietnam in the first few weeks of the program and am now in Cambodia. In both countries have I been able to witness the sharp contrast between the fully (and some might say, excessively) developed country of Singapore and the struggling, post-conflict regimes in each of Vietnam and Cambodia. With each visit, I more easily understand the different paths each has followed towards development and why.
The impact of the Khmer Rouge is still readily apparent in Cambodia. The killing fields and the centerpoints of interrogation and torture – areas which ought to reflect the country’s recovery – instead reflect a decrepit disrespect for the millions of lives lost. It is undeniable that a genocide occurred in this country 30 years ago, and yet, the monuments constructed for the victims are in near shambles, the government has not engaged in a vetting process to ensure that those implicated in the regime no longer occupy positions of power, the war crimes tribunal is slowly getting off its feet but struggling with the same lack of resources and transparency as the other areas of nation-building, official corruption is rampant and immense signs of poverty are ubiquitous.

In Vietnam, the remnants of the war are more clearly remnants of the past rather than persisting problems of the present. Still, the injustices impeding the country’s positive development can be discerned by even the most sheltered tourist’s eyes. On our way to the war tunnels, the tour bus we were on stopped at an art factory of sorts. It was an opportunity for us tourists to shop the wares of Vietnamese artists who suffered from chemical warfare and were now making a living through art. As we uncomfortably shuffled off the bus, we became cognizant of how unfair the circumstances surrounding us were: here were victims of the war – people whose lives profoundly changed for the worst, who ought to have been compensated for their injuries and not working or standing before clicking tourist cameras. None of us expressly chose to be the in the roles that we occupied at that moment and yet we were helpless to change them.

Then in Singapore, the societal contraditions and shortcomings are more subtle but just as real. The country claims to stand as a stanchion of economic development. Most, if not all Singaporeans, when asked, will vouch patriotically and defensively for their government’s chosen means of growth. The expat community appears as they do in most developing countries – living well and luxuriously and overly satisfied that their dollar goes a lot further than it would at home. Yet, there are also the fearfully silent groups of society – like the people who are crammed into the makeshift and dilapidated apartments I pass on my way home; or the immigrant workers I see every morning piled into trucks and rumoured to be living in shipping containers somewhere outside the city centre; or even the sex trade workers, many of whom make a living off the expat community. These people don’t say anything when asked what they think of development.

So the lessons have been occuring and to continue occur both inside and outside the lecture hall.

Term 2 begins this week and I hope it’s not another 3 months until I write again – I’ll try my best in spite of what I anticipate will be another term marked by late nights studying, interspersed with travel around the region and my constants attempts to retain sanity.