Party!

Saturday night was the launch party of the Anjali House Writing Workshop that I have been leading while I’ve been here in Siem Reap. Actually, this was more of a birthday party because this event marked one year since the beginning of this on-going workshop with the Young Adults Program. 
    As we were setting up the room above the restaurant at the Karavansara apartments, we began to hear a distant rumble and see flashes of light in the sky. The forecast had been for another electrical storm, and that, of course, would have meant all the people we had invited would have stayed away. Our luck held out, though, as did the storm, and within an hour the room was packed full of friends, supporters, volunteers, kids and curious visitors. While everyone was mingling, we were projecting onto a screen behind the podium a film which has become very special to us. In 2000, filmmaker, Anne Bass, came across a sixteenyear-old dancer, Sy, from one of the villages around Angkor Wat. She was so moved by his grace and charm that she took it upon herself to sponsor his journey to America,where he trained with both The School of American Ballet in New York and the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle.The resulting film of his experiences, Dancing Across Borders, chronicles the ups and downs of his life as he made his way into his professional life as a ballet dancer. It is this film which was used as inspiration for the writing which resulted in this latest issue of the Anjali House magazine.

And then it was time to start the program. Sam Flint, the Director of Anjali House, introduced me. I introduced the program and the kids, and then one by one, they each came up to the podium. These kids are all between 15 and 17 years old. A few of them have been taking part in each of the four workshops since I ran the first one a year ago. Some have only taken part in a few. But they each walked up to the podium with their distinctive informal poise, introduced themselves, greeted the audience and read their work. It takes a lot for an adult to stand in front of a packed room and read and talk. Imagine doing it as a poor kid in front of a room full of adult strangers, and in a language far from your own. I knew they were nervous, but their nerves never showed as they read poems and response papers about their views of success and their own personal dreams for their futures. A year ago, when I first met some of these kids, their dreams barely extended beyond the idea of being a temple tour guide. Now they talk about being lawyers and doctors, teachers and managers, and a few even dream of becoming writers. 

    The new edition of their magazine, Wonderful Writing: Imagination is the Best Power, is over thirty pages long. It contains poems, stories, drawings, and photographs done by the Anjali kids, as well as by a group of teenagers from Ogilvie High School in Australia who collaborated with us in this workshop. This was another change from the other workshops we’ve run before, and it added immensely to the scope of the discussions and the broadening of their visions.
    I know I’ve said it over and over, but I couldn’t be more proud of these young adults, and it is one of the great joys of my life to be able to count them all as friends and call them “my kids.” I knew I was committed to them and the Anjali House program after my trip to Cambodia last year. But now that my month here is drawing to a close, I can honestly say I feel more committed to these kids, this school and this country than ever.
    Anjali House will be selling downloads of the magazine for US$5 here, but here is a taste of what is inside the covers. This is one of the group poems that the Anjali House kids wrote after viewing and discussing the film.