The Elderly Merchant

There's an elderly Cambodian man with a small store just down the red dirt road, only a short walk from the front gates of the Lotus Lodge hotel. His roadside stand is typical of the thousands of other similar, small, and independent shops scattered around the country. Constructed from little more than clapboard and tin, the shop has been hammered together at uneven angles with little regard for measurement or framing.  I have come to appreciate a certain Cambodian carpentry charm in what may appear as defective to other eyes.  Aesthetic consideration, at this little Mom and Pop wooden shack store is like many structures around the country--it is much less important than functionality.

People come and go all day long. They buy any number of products ranging from soft drinks, snack food, fresh coconuts, hygiene products and even black-market gasoline used to fill up their motorbikes. Some locals walk from nearby villages, others pull up on their 125cc Honda bikes. Seldom does a car ever stop.  Most of the time, one can see any number of family members hanging out there and children are often playing.


On many occasions, there are elder Cambodian men sitting on plastic chairs, usually shirtless, glass in hand, drinking a concoction of homemade rice whiskey. From their unclothed bodies, a number scars are visible. I often think about the scars and the stories behind the healed-over wounds. These men would have lived through the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. My mind wanders. Maybe they survived years of forced labour and unimaginable beatings. Maybe they were instigating these beatings, working for the horrendous Pol Pot regime.

Either way, it doesn't really matter anymore. Time has passed, slowly, through the rhythmic slumbering days of this hot country. People have moved on. The large population of young people are baby-boomers born after the war, and the older population are content with peace. They remember, but life moves on in Cambodia.  

As I pull up one of the plastic chairs, order a can of Coke and join  the old men, I see them smiling and laughing, revealing the few remaining teeth they have. As the mid-day sun beats down, they sip their rice whiskey and smoke their cigarettes. Customers come and go.     

The old man's shack has become my refuge......a place to go and get away from it all, if only for a brief and temporary respite from my responsibilities at the hotel. The fact that I plainly don't speak Khmer (Cambodian language), and they don't speak a word of English, doesn't stop them from striking up conversations with me. They talk to me enthusiastically, gesturing with their hands, grinning and laughing. I respond with words that are equally alien to them. We continue this exchange, until I finish my Coke, pay the elderly shop owner, say my goodbyes, and make my way back to the Lotus Lodge.