"Can I have a dollar?" the little girl insisted in impeccable English as she hopped in my lap, wrapping a brightly colored macrame bracelet around my exposed wrist. "Fifty cents for a bracelet!" another girl said as she finished the tie off on my other wrist, sealing the deal before I was even aware of her presence.
Prior to embarking on my southeast Asian journey, I paid little thought to the complex social and political realities I would be encountering. As an eighteen year old woman travelling alone I prided myself on being both independent and self sufficient. My hard earned American dollars would carry me as far as my adventurous feet. My obvious privilege somehow alluded me.
Many of these dollars had come from middle to upper class parents in trade for the occasional hours I spent entertaining their seldom neglected offspring.
Entering into Cambodia in the middle of the night proved to shake up my perceptions of familial life once and for all.
Children flooded our buses, eager to sell anything, eager for cash to take home to their parents.
Weeks later I received a massage on the beach. The four sets of fingers I felt as I lay face down in a pillow belonged to a young woman, her seven-year old daughter (whom I had previously befriended), an older woman (possibly a grandmother), and lastly I realized I was also feeling the tiny, innocent fingers of a small child, probably around four years of age.
My massage felt relaxing physically, but mentally I was troubled. Children deserve to have a childhood.
As tourists continue to flood Cambodia and her sister countries, are the dollars going to affect child labor? Will the kids be more or less likely to get an education? Or will they just have ample opportunities to become more efficient salespeople?
As Cambodia transitions from being war-torn and poverty stricken to an up and coming tourist destination, the children are clear indicators of it's slow and steady progression.
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