by Gail Gutradt
KHANA, the Khmer partner NGO of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, had offered some money for extra education, and Wayne decided to send six of the older girls to beauty school to study hair styling and makeup. Even in small villages, Khmer weddings are lavish stylized affairs, and it seemed like a great way for the girls to be able to begin saving for university. I imagined them painting elaborate wedding makeup on all the little kids for practice and laughed out loud. I longed to be there. It would be a pure, joyous hullabaloo!
The beauty classes might accomplish another function as well. They would get the kids out into the community, and continue to integrate children with AIDS into village life. When I was last there, people from the village had begun dropping by in the mornings to buy fish from our fishponds and have a cup of coffee at a little snack shop Wayne had started at Chhang’s Place. I remembered the first year I was at Wat Opot, when a villager had asked me whether he could get sick if he bought a fish from someone with AIDS. In those days, local people were afraid even to come through the gate, and I reflected on how far Wat Opot has come.
Even as a new brick wall is being built, the invisible walls between Wat Opot and the surrounding community are coming down, and more and more, our children are beginning to live in the world.
42
In a Rocket Made of Ice
At the end of the rainy season small dragonflies hatch and fly up from the rice fields. The children capture them. They pinch their wings together and tie threads to their bodies, like fishermen tying flies. The threads are thin fibers teased from the raveled edges of rice bags. The children hold the threads between their thumbs and forefingers and run in circles as the dragonflies trail above them like tiny kites. Or they release them, tossing them in the air to fly free. Then the slender filaments float in their wakes, and undulate like the messages towed by biplanes that buzzed over the beach when I was a child.
Here boys buzz about, pretending to be airplanes. A shiny green mango leaf torn and twisted onto a twig becomes a propeller, and the little boys skip back and forth, leaping into the air. They are so joyous and light I imagine them rising up like dragonflies, heedless of gravity, heedless of all that holds them.
It was evening. I was sitting alone on the low wall that surrounds the crematorium. I had lost track of hours. The moon was almost full and about halfway up, so maybe it was not very late. I was feeling stunned. I needed a quiet moment just to breathe and gather my emotions for the impossibility of saying goodbye to a hundred people I loved.
So many times I have come and gone from this place that sometimes events become confused in my mind. Four times I have visited Wat Opot and then left, and I hope I will return again and again. But this story happened on the last night of my second visit, sometime in May of 2008. The very next day I would leave Wat Opot and fly to America. I had been steeping myself in this place all week, breathing it in, imprinting my memory with its smells and sounds, loving the weight and the embraces of the children on my lap and the touch of their hands in my hands as we walked.
After a while Sovann wandered by. He was only seventeen then, about to graduate from high school. In those days I didn’t often get to talk with him. He shared a house with the older boys at the far end of the compound, and usually he was busy studying, still hoping at that time to become a doctor.
Wayne had told me about how Sovann had promised his dying father that all the children would get an education, and even at seventeen Sovann was feeling the weight of his responsibility. He had already brought two of his younger brothers to live at Wat Opot, and in future years he would bring his youngest brother, Kangho, and his sister too. He knew Wayne would help him put them all through school.
That night, sitting alone with me on the low wall of the pa cha, Sovann admitted that even though he studied hard he would have to give the teacher money to graduate from high school. He confessed even to hoping someone might sell him a medical degree. “If I buy a doctor’s degree maybe I can make money sooner, take care my family. Maybe come back here, help Mr. Wayne.”
We sat holding hands, watching the moon, sharing the gentle evening in the easy, affectionate manner of people who speak different languages but manage to communicate eloquently with few words.
After a few minutes he said, “My teacher say people fly to the moon in a rocket ship. Is it really true?”
I told him it was, and that men had even walked on the moon. “How does your teacher know about people going to the moon?” I asked.
“He say he read it in the science book yesterday. And today my teacher tell me the sun is bigger than the moon. I don’t understand. How can that be? They look same-same.”
I assured him the sun was much larger than the moon.
Then I told him about the solar system, and the stars, and I diagrammed the different kinds of eclipses with a twig in the dust. He still could not grasp how the little moon could darken the big sun.
“Well,” I said, “do you see that tree way over there? Hold up your hand. Now do you see how your hand covers the tree? Is your hand really bigger than the tree?”
He got it and smiled.
“So do people ever fly to the sun?”
“No, the sun is very, very hot,” I explained. “It is so hot, if they get close they would burn up.”
He considered this for a minute. Suddenly his face brightened.
“Maybe they could fly to the sun in a rocket made of ice!”
We sat together, Sovann and I, both very quiet under the full moon. Somewhere there was music. Maybe it was the song of a night bird, or a funeral chant, or maybe it was a flute, a simple melody played on a hollow reed: one line, and then a single, pure note, resolving into silence.
Gratitude
In a Rocket Made of Ice grew from an article I wrote for Kyoto Journal in 2008. I had never written for publication, and the night before I was to submit my manuscript I met, by chance, a professor of writing named Dianne Benedict. Dianne told me she loved working with new writers and offered to come by the next day to put some finishing touches on my piece. In a single marathon session, Dianne blew the breath of life into a factual, arm’s-length account of Wat Opot. She taught me to write in the first person, to be less shy about my own experience, to more warmly engage the reader. For her extraordinary gesture and her encouragement for a novice writer and complete stranger I offer my deep gratitude.
All along the way, as I wrote and rewrote, edited and reedited, other wonderful people would appear in my life to offer their help and support. Though it never ceased to amaze me, I came to see that it was not to me so much, but to the work itself that people responded, a manifestation of the compassionate bodhisattva in all of us. For I have come to feel strongly that we are each of us in service, and give according to the fundamental good in our natures, and that my own contribution is merely as a storyteller, a scribe. I write this at a point in my life when cancer has returned and threatens to cut my own time short, and when I struggle against drug-induced fatigue to craft a decent English sentence, but with the full confidence, learned from Wayne, that if I need to lay this project down someone else will pick it up and see it through. For some, their help would flow from friendship and love, or from sympathy for my commitment over the past seven years. But fundamentally we are all in service to the children. The stories of their courage and compassion, and yes, their tragedies too, deserve to be told.
As I told the stories and wrote the chapters, I pestered my friends relentlessly, and from their questions and insights came a richness of perspective. Thank you: Alison Woodman, Harry Hurlbert, Benjamin Thelwell, David Rosen, Paul DeVore, Jennifer DeVore, Cheryl Corson, Laurence Craig-Green, Ralph Shapiro, Ellen Goldman, Luke Powell, Marjorie Speed Powell, Ingrid Sunzenauer, Susan Frost, Deborah Ceranic, Jeff Kaley, Jim McQuaid, Nick Humez, Jo Diggs, John Compton, Miriam Senft, Marilyn Handel, Martin Love, Matthew Zuschlag, Ed and Patricia Lueddeke, Lawton Vogel, Scott Wolland, Nate Berger, Chris Vincenty. There are others, and their omissi
on will haunt me.
To all the people of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island, Maine, who came to readings and talks and who donated generously to children in a far-off land, and to those who felt called to travel to Cambodia to volunteer. To the children of Mount Desert Elementary School, who asked the most perceptive questions. To Barbara Baron Gifford and her sewing circle, who made it their summer project to craft a doll for each Wat Opot child. Thank you for helping me to unite the antipodes of my world into one embrace.
Grateful bows to Laura Bonyon Neal and the True Nature Zen Sangha, for welcoming me to abide with them.
To Belinda Yalin, dear friend, who suffered the little children by listening to endless tellings of the stories, thanks, thanks, and ever thanks.
Special appreciation to Renee Fox and Judith Swazey, whose relentless encouragement has kept me grounded while simultaneously helping me over some especially high hurdles.
My dear friend Luke Powell has spent his career photographing the peoples of Afghanistan and the Middle East. His gentle images reveal the dignity and humanity often lost in the headlines and badgering news cycles of our age. It was Luke’s work in the mountains and minefields of Afghanistan that inspired me to search for service. He taught me, I hope, to avoid the traps of journalistic sensationalism while still allowing people to reveal their stories with a dignity that allows us to see them as very like ourselves, rather than using their hardships as an excuse to distance them as the Other, fantasize our own superiority and rush in to “fix” what we cannot comprehend is not broken.
A huge shout-out to Bennett “Buck” Stevens for intercepting a prayer made to the Universe for service and introducing me to Wayne and Wat Opot, for calling me on my nonsense and for skillfully deflecting all excuses, even when I was really scared. Without Buck, I would never have gone to Cambodia and none of this could have happened.
My gratitude to Andy Gray for allowing me to quote from hours of recorded interviews of Wayne. Andy’s probing questions, so different from my own, gave me a much more rounded understanding of Wayne’s spiritual journey.
Years ago I took a workshop with Jay O’Callahan, master storyteller and national treasure, and over the years I have returned to Marshfield, Massachusetts, where Jay does much of his teaching. Jay believes that we are all very good at telling ourselves what we do wrong, but rarely do we have any notion of our strengths. I cannot thank Jay enough for his joyous, gentle and heart-centered teaching.
To all the volunteers I met at Wat Opot over the years, each with their own insight, especially to Shelly Hill, Andrew Jamieson, Deb Leavitt, Bonnie Woolley, Ron King, Miwa Ikemiya and Caroline Broissand. To Melinda Lies, who found her home at Wat Opot too late to be included in this story, but who, with Wayne, is writing much of the next chapter. And to the memory of our beloved friend Steve Jessup, “Papa Steve the Giant Tasmanian,” who showed us all that love is not a language learned from a phrase book.
I thank as well the many doctors and healers, traditional and otherwise, without whose tender mercies I surely would not have survived to finish this project: Philip L. Brooks, John Swalec, Charlie Hendricks, Ormand Lee Haynes, Michelle Kinbrook, Joyce MacIntosh, Melanie Clauson, Rachel Sharp, Stephen Curtin and Christine Cuneo. And to Lynne Assaf, David Walker and Lawton Vogel for helping me to hold fast to my humanity through all the dramas.
To Wayne Dale Matthysse and all the people of Wat Opot, young and old: every word of this book is written in gratitude to you. Loving my extended family of tumbling children has been one of the greatest joys of my life.
To the people of Ants-in-a-Line Village and the surrounding communities, thank you for graciously welcoming me into your world. To Arun Chea Meier, for afternoon tea in her lovely pavilion under the mango trees, for her insights into village life and for allowing me a glimpse of the value of meditation in coming to peace with the terrible history of the war years. To the staff of the Golden Gate Hotel Annex for their warm hospitality whenever I returned to Phnom Penh, and to the tuk-tuk drivers on Street 278, who carried me safely home to Wat Opot.
To Beth Kanji Goldring for her love and resolute grounding, and for always telling me the truth, whether or not it was what I had in mind. And to Mary Dunbar for her gentle optimism.
To Pico Iyer for his gracious encouragement at a moment when all seemed lost. And to Anne Fadiman and Dr. Paul Farmer for generously taking the time to read and support this work.
To Robin Desser, my editor at Alfred A. Knopf, who allowed this book to touch her heart, and whose gentle guidance created an aura of safety as she urged me to reach yet a little deeper to prepare the text for this edition.
I would like to thank the editors of Kyoto Journal for their unfailing courtesy and encouragement to a beginning writer. To John Einarsen, KJ’s amazing founding editor, for diving into this project with his whole heart and keeping me focused on The Work, for traveling to Cambodia to “sniff the air” and get to know Wayne and the children and understand what is so extraordinary about Wat Opot and for his unfailing optimism, dedication and tenacity. To Ken Rodgers for his ever-wise and sober suggestions.
And finally, and above all, to Stewart Wachs, who, as associate editor of Kyoto Journal, recognized and nurtured the writer in my soul, and who, as my first editor and at incalculable personal cost, parented this book from its inception. Dear friend, without you this book would not exist.
Photo Credits
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are by the author.
© Bennett Stevens
Andy Gray
Andy Gray
Alastair McNaughton
Andy Gray
Wayne Dale Matthysse
Wayne Dale Matthysse
Andy Gray
© Bennett Stevens
Wayne Dale Matthysse
Andy Gray
Color Insert:
© Bennett Stevens
A Note About the Author
Gail Gutradt has volunteered at the Wat Opot Children’s Community in Cambodia since 2005. Her stories, articles and poems have appeared in the Japan-based Kyoto Journal, as well as in the Utne Reader and Ashé Journal. Her first Kyoto Journal article, “The Things We’ve Gone Through Together,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Bar Harbor, Maine.
In a Rocket Made of Ice: Among the Children of Wat Opot Gail Gutradt
Discussion Guide
The questions and topics that follow are intended to enhance your group’s conversation about Gail Gutradt’s In a Rocket Made of Ice: Among the Children of Wat Opot, a book about one woman’s journey to a community in Cambodia where children with or orphaned by HIV/AIDS find love, compassion, and family.
1. One of the first things you see as you open In A Rocket Made of Ice is a full-page photograph of children running toward you on a road. Does the art and photography woven throughout the book affect how you imagine what it might be like to live in Wat Opot? If so, how?
2. Dr. Paul Farmer, an expert in global health issues (whose story was told in Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains), acknowledges in the foreword to In A Rocket Made of Ice “the limitations of a visitor’s ability to care for the chronically ill, the unintended consequences of well-meaning projects and the often-agonizing moral dilemmas involved in caring for the sick and dying when certain resources are scarce” (x). What does he mean by this, vis-à-vis what follows in Gutradt’s account of the challenges of sustaining Wat Opot?
3. There are numerous moments in the book where limited resources were of particular issue for Wayne Dale Matthysse, the cofounder of Wat Opot, and all the volunteers. What role does money play in this book, including Gutradt’s own decisions about fund-raising among people she knows? How do the volunteers provide other kinds of healing and care above and beyond these scarce resources?
4. How do the author’s own experiences with illness—first her mother’s and then her own—shape her decision to volunteer in Cambodia? And how do they form her as a person, including her impress
ion of the preciousness of life? How do she and the children at Wat Opot learn from each other about being brave in the face of the death of loved ones, and the possibility of one’s own death?
5. Gutradt describes her American friends’ reactions to her first five-month-long trip to Cambodia as dubious, if not shocked. What were some of the author’s own fears about what would await her there (143)? And what would your own anxieties—and hopes—be about living in such a place for an extended period of time?
6. How do rituals—both religious and nonreligious—affect how the people of Wat Opot contend with and feel about death? How does the Cambodian attitude toward death, as portrayed in this book, differ from how we think about and portray it in the United States? What role do the different religions among the denizens of Wat Opot and the surrounding communities play in general, in the book?
7. Among the many children we meet at Wat Opot is a boy called Pesei, who over the course of Gutradt’s trips there grows up and makes several significant contributions to the community, including his painting of the Welcoming Mural (shown on 242). What does his story represent about the ability of his and future generations of children to “grow up with AIDS,” and to live happy and productive lives with the illness?
8. Discuss the meaning of the book’s title (316). Why do you think the author only revealed it near the very end?
9. Gutradt’s attempt to capture life at Wat Opot includes the words of the kids themselves. How did hearing the voices of the children directly affect your involvement in the story?
10. What does Gutradt learn from Srey Mom (chapter 5) about what she can give the children most easily? Consider and discuss her statement that “there are so many children. It is hard for them to always have to share everything, never to be first, never to get enough” (28).