Coffee shop conscience

Written from diary, Sunday 15^th July 2012 @ 17.10pm

For almost four hours I have been sitting and reviving myself from a heavy night out. I'm at a modern, western owned café along the riverfront in Phnom Penh drinking my iced latte and eating cheesecake.

There is a full length glass window beside me which shows the small side-street by my sofa to which I have been looking out of for the past hour as though I were at a zoo.

I say this because of what I’ve been watching. Some kind of primal scene, it seems.

I’ve just seen a barefoot woman washing her six-month-old baby on the street. I saw two 20-something-year-old girls sitting while grooming each other for head lice. I saw children the age of six, dodging past cars, trying to sell bracelets and second hand books to passers by.

A feeling of guilt has come over me as I sit here… watching. I know I came here to help, but what can I do for all those people out there? It’s very sad, and even sadder to think that some people are so ignorant to not even know about it – as I was.