She couldn't have been older than 5. maybe 6 at the most. I spotted her playing under a strange looking tree.
She was caught up in her own little world of make believe. It looked as though she had no idea I was even there. I watched her singing and dancing around with two leaves in her hand. She would swing them back and forth as if they were her own personal wings. You see, we had stopped at an open aired restaurant and rest area on our way to the Kuy Village, about 4 hours north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We had been driving for around and hour and a half, and stopped for breakfast. There were tables under a thatched roof, and waitresses that brought us rice and grilled beef, with soup and sweet vegables. I was eating a spoon full of rice when I spotted her. There were lots of people around selling various types of food - pineapples, fried banana chips, stuffed fried frogs, pomello's, yams, boiled peanuts, and barbeque'd spiders (huge ones I might add) - so I took it she was a daughter of the one of the vendors. Every day they come to this same restaurant area to sell their goods to the travellers. Every day it seemed their day was the same. Get up. Harvest the pineapples. Bring them to the rest area. Slice and peel them. Bag them. Walk around and sell them. Day after day. We were told that the children at the side of the road did not go to school. They could not read. There were no books to tell them about life on the side of other roads or in other villages or even in other cities. There was no television for them to see how life looked so completely different. She had no concept of what life looked like on the side of the road where I lived. All she knew...all she was aware of...all she would ever know would be life on the side of this remote road in Cambodia. And in one moment as I looked at her, I felt a wave of compassion - perhaps the same compassion Jesus has for people who live their lives on the side of the road.
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