Mongkul Borei

I was in a small village in the district of Mongkul Borei in western Cambodia a few days ago, working on a little photo/video piece about how the Baha'i community here is slowly (and sometimes not so slowly) transforming community life in a number of villages across the country by providing moral and spiritual education to children and youth. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it really is having a profound effect in some of these places. In this one village, over one hundred people were already involved and the demand for the classes was far exceeding the ability of the organizers to provide them.
Anyway the second day that I was there, we were waiting for a class that was supposed to start but the students were missing and the teacher had gone to find them. I was sitting with my friend Kuoy who was there to help with the classes and to help me with the translating. He was sitting under the tree, flipping though a book and would periodically break into song. I was pacing around, watching gusts of wind kick up little dust storms on the dry rice fields, pushing them into stands of bamboo that would rattle and dance and then fall silent again.
A few boys wandered into the scene, glanced over at us, and then walked over to the school building, disappearing inside. I wandered over to see what they were up to and as I approached, could hear them laughing and joking. I stood in the door for a moment, camera in hand, and watched them push desks around and write what only could be naughty khmer phrases on the blackboard and then rubbing them out. They didn't seem to notice me at all. While they played, I slowly raised my camera, eith the intention of checking light, fixing focus. Just as I was bringing the camera to my eye, one of the boys grabbed a small cushion that was lying in the corner to hurled it across the room. The cushion, which had clearly seen better days, began to leak its feathers the moment it left the boy's hand. Upon impact with his friend, the cushion exploded, filling the air with them.
The boys froze when my shutter clicked. All of them turning to face me. We just looked at each other for a moment, feathers hanging in the air, light slanting in from the door across from me. They stared. I stared. feathers drifted.
I shot a couple more frames in the moments before the feathers all settled back on the floor. The sound of the shutter seemed to release them and they all began to laugh, kicking the feathers up again and racing outside. As the last boy left, he turned and flashed me a smile, pulling his fingers up to his eye and clicking an imaginary camera before disappearing out the door.