Tim Cousins '02 drives along Phnom Penh's streets in his 1986 Toyota Corona, listening to Frankie Avalon and moving easily with the flow of traffic: an organic mass of undisciplined, slow and oddly amicable driving. Cars move like schools of fish through water. It's like a friendly symphony of forward motion. There is no road rage in Phnom Penh.
Cousins hardly seems to notice.
In the three months since he's been living here with his parents, Jim and Catherine, he's taken to driving like he's taken to everything else Cambodian. He even talks about moving here for good. "I go back [to America]," Cousins said, "I see people complaining about the smallest things. Here they don't complain; they just find a solution."
At the moment, Tim Cousins is working in communications for a non-governmental organization called Krousar Thmey, which in Khmer means "New Family." The organization works with disabled children (teaching Khmer sign language and printing Khmer Braille books) and runs centers to help some of Cambodia's 10,000 street kids get off the street.
The Colby contingent in front of the royal palace in Phnom Penh. From left, Kim Cousins '04, Jim Cousins '75, Tim Cousins '02, Jean Preti '02, and Carl Balit '02, who is staying in Cambodia for the year to work in finance related to redevelopment.One problem, however, that it hasn't been able to tackle is the massive pedophilia trade that has emerged in the capital city in recent years. "We were actively opposing it," said Cousins, "but our centers started getting blown up, and we started getting shot at, so we decided to cool it for a while."
Jean Preti '02 arrived in Cambodia a month after Cousins, her boyfriend, and soon found work with The Green Gate Center, coordinating a tutoring program for students at the international schools.
She, too, has taken a strong liking to Cambodia and even found a serendipitous connection to her research as a psychology major at Colby. She was looking into children who seem to have past life memories--odd skills, strange name recollections, fears of peculiar things, all of which disappear by age 5. And now in Cambodia she finds herself in a Buddhist country, where everyone believes in reincarnation.
"It's been surprisingly easy," she said of the adjustment to her home for the year. "The hardest thing is adjusting to all the contrasts you see here.
"It's such a beautiful place, but you also see a lot of sadness."
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Sidebar: Next Generation Finds Beauty and Sadness