The Children of Cambodia

We had heard horror stories about the mobs of children around the temples trying to sell everything from cold water to scarves. Mostly we heard from everyone about how annoying they were. We found them incredibly amusing and not that annoying. We devised some strategies in dealing with them.

1) Ignore them or politely say a firm "No, thank you". This was no fun though.
2) Run away. Don discovered this technique which was fun for him as well as great fun for the children, who gave chase giggling. Even several hours later the children remembered him as "the Mister who ran away" and flocked around us to talk.



3) The children try to strike up conversations. One technique is to ask your name. After telling them our real names a couple of times, Don told one girl that his name was Steve Jobs. She proceeded to follow us yelling "Mr. Steve Jobs, Mr. Steve Jobs" much to our amusement:





4) Another conversation technique was to ask where we were from. The conversation typically went like this:

Kid - "Where you from, Mister (or Lady)?"
Kate/Don - "America" or sometimes "Canada"
Kid - "Canada. Capital Ottawa", if the kid was particularly ambitious we got "Canada. Capital Ottawa. Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax..." and went on to list all the provinces and ended with "C-A-N-A-D-A". We even once got "Canada. Capital Ottawa. Population 33 million"

With this sequence repeated endlessly we decided to throw them a curveball.

Kid - "Where you from, Mister (or Lady)?"
Kate/Don - "Yugloslavia"
Kid - "You lie!"

These kids are good, so we decided to use a country that still existed:

Kid - "Where you from, Mister (or Lady)?"
Kate/Don - "Luxembourg"
Kid - "Parlez-vous Francias?"

Wow.

One kid trying to sell us 10 postcards, counted the 10 cards in 4 languages.

Our last morning, we were at a temple shortly after sunrise. Three boys approached us on top of a temple and proceeded to hand Kate a small flower and then put a palm leaf ring on her finger:





Then asked for money to help them attend school:



It can be disconcerting to be approached by so many children begging or selling things but the small amount of money we gave them is small to us but means much to their lives. We heard that 1/2 of the population of Cambodia is under 20, as a result of the Khmer Rouge and the massacre of a generation in the late 70s.