By Friday afternoon I was crashing into the weekend; hit three provinces and did about 25 site interviews in a week, most days starting at dawn to avoid the heat and traffic. So I was sort of sluggishly considering whether I should go out for drinks with the Nexus or rather plop myself into bed with vitamen water and the internet. I felt mopey, but obliged to do something fun.
Then Sarah suggested we go to the Olympic Stadium to watch disabled people play volleyball, a game-changing proposition.
My guide book had rather snidely pointed out that the Cambodian Olympic Stadium has never hosted the Olympic Games (though it did draw Jackie Kennedy to the city for a sporting match). Over the course of this trip I’ve developed a hostile, almost competitive relationship with the Rough Guide. I wanted to check out the stadium myself.
The building is hailed as a great feat of art deco and modern art elements, a description that can only be called exaggerated. The “Olympic” title is touchingly wishful: the inner stadium is large enough to host exactly one volleyball match, with just a little extra room where other teams in the tournament can sit on the ledge or the floor of the court and watch up close. Here are some Malaysian players waiting for their chance at the World Cup.
It had rained all day, so there was a little bit of flooding.
And here we are trying to figure out where the acoustics are coming from.
But we had a great time! There were bats flying noisily overhead and you could buy boiled peanuts with salt which were still wet from the preparation process. We were among a handful of spectators, along with some street kids who were much more interested in us than the game.
Pauline had just had a motorino accident (someone tried to grab her purse and she actually fought back) so she had a first aid kit in her bag. When the kids came over for our peanuts, they pointed to her wounds and showed them their own cuts. Pauline just pulled out some cotton and iodine and started disinfecting everybody, no gloves - just a careful touch. Children started lining up, pointing out some pretty ghastly boo boos. I thought wow, no. I could never do that. I’m squeamish about blood and germaphobic. And then I thought how Pauline is a better person than I am, and I need to get over my hang ups so that I can expand my ability to help out. I can carry a pair of latex gloves in my purse. I was in awe of Pauline for the rest of the night. No gloves. Mind-blowing.
The game itself was just friendly fire, a prematch before the World Cup. Germany beat Cambodia the first round and then team Khmer hit their stride and took the second match. I would have thought disabled volleyball in Cambodia would be just too tragic to be fun but it was terrific. The strategy is a little different, mobility is really an issue for some of the players. So when the ball comes they just hit it as high as possible to buy time for someone else to get there, aim, and shoot. Aside from that they were dextrous, and powerful, and it was definitely the most beautiful sportsmatch I’ve ever seen.
But the real fun was watching the cleaners, a sport within a sport. The ceiling must have been leaking and of course slipping on the court would be exponentially worse for people who are already disabled to begin with. So the Cambodians were resourceful as usual and came up with a solution: an army of floor wipers (you can see two of them in the middle of the photo, above).
Every thirty seconds or so the floor wipers came in to dry off their assigned spot, dodging the players and generally confusing them — quite a few points were won due to wiper/player interference. At fairly frequent intervals, a host of young people came rushing out with mops to wipe the floor down in its entirety. They were laughing so hard and sliding on the floor with their mops with such infectious enthusiasm that other children chased after them — moppers and their chasers.
At the end of the game the moppers got some professional training from the white guy on the far end of the photo. This week there’s the official World Cup finale - if you know how to stream things on the internet it is definitely worth watching.
