by Sue Perkins
It was then I felt the breeze.
That’s strange, I thought. There must be a crack in the wall, some tiny fissure through which a draught is blowing. I waited there a while – and, sure enough, the breeze came again, this time more forcefully, whipping around my naked body. They should fix that, I thought. Get some Cambodian polyfilla on it – that’ll sort it out.
It was then I heard the rustle. The noise of several animals snuffling in some undergrowth that felt mere feet away from me.
That’s really strange, I thought. They can’t have put any insulation in this bathroom, because the sound pollution is quite frankly terrible.
Then another gust, and some more rustling – followed by a grunt. I was starting to panic a little. I fumbled for my head-torch, popped it on, and looked up.
It was at precisely that moment I discovered there was no glass ceiling. In fact, there was no ceiling at all. The beam of light firing from my forehead met the endless black of the night sky and surrendered, petering out just a few metres later. I was basically showering outdoors, save for four rudimentary walls, roughly six foot high, covering my modesty. Essentially I was in a stall. In a jungle.
The head-torch also revealed that the bathroom walls were black. How bizarre. What an odd colour choice. You’d think they’d paint them white to match the rest of the room. It took a little time for my eyes to adjust, to work out that the walls weren’t painted black: they were simply teeming with bugs – every genus of creepy-crawly lavishly represented in an en-suite panorama.
They had been waiting there for me. It was only the running water that had kept them at bay. Now, naked, dry, with a head-torch guiding them, like a runway light, I presented myself as a fat pink buffet for every airborne blood-sucker to come and get me. I began to feel pinpricks on my ankle and the small of my back. Something was making inroads into my upper thigh. One had mounted a sortie on my left tit and was now mid-munch. I ran as fast as I could into the bedroom and slammed the door.
I didn’t wake the next morning. That would imply I had slept. Instead, I was up all night, listening to that high-pitched whine, intermittently scratching and slapping.
Cambodia would be the death of me. It was determined, determined to be the death of me.
14. Seebagh and the Kreung
The Kreung hill tribe live deep in the forests of Ratanakiri without running water or electricity. They rise with the sun, and spend their days foraging and harvesting. Their homes are makeshift huts, rebuilt each and every year once the monsoon has done its work, ravaging joints, rotting wood and soaking everything in its wake.
We parked up in the forest clearing. The village kids were playing cricket in the red dust: an old two-litre water bottle stamped on to fashion a bat, a smooth stone for a ball. Around them milled a large family of pigs, the thick skirt of their bellies creating waves in the fine dirt. Their behaviour had become so familiar: low-level grunting, an accidental collision, followed by all hell breaking loose. There’d be a short burst of hysterical, high-pitched squealing, then the porky brouhaha would die away as quickly as it had begun. Pigs – they’re such bloody drama queens.
Olly, as always, was the advance party. He set off towards the huts to introduce himself in the traditional soundman way: a wave, a hello and a judicious hand down the shirt. Matt and I took advantage of the downtime and decided to have a wander around the place. In the shade of one of the huts we found a strange creature that was, on closer inspection, an emaciated brindled pig. It was so thin that it barely looked like a pig at all. This little runt had obviously been bullied off every single scrap of food in the village, and had all but given up.
Matt and I didn’t need to say anything. We just headed back to the truck and opened the boot. We knew the drill. Wherever we went there were always animals wretched with hunger and in distress, and we would empty whatever we had by way of snacks onto the ground for them. We always tried to be species-appropriate in our offerings (nuts, seeds, apples and the like) but in some areas it just wasn’t possible. I won’t lie, there was the odd dog baffled by our gift of a Khmer sponge cake or a bag of luminescent Chinese knock-off Doritos.
On this occasion, the boot yielded fruit. Literally. Our fixer had loaded it with a billion bananas from the market – stubby little things, like jaundiced fingers. We grabbed handfuls and headed back to the pig.
He didn’t even acknowledge us as we approached, his head still bowed, snuffling fruitlessly in the dead soil. We stood over him, and dropped a banana just in front of his snout. He recoiled in fear as it bounced on the hard ground. What the hell is that? He looked around, side to side, suspiciously. He turned around. Where on earth did this come from? He seemed utterly nonplussed. The strangest thing was, he didn’t think to look upwards, in the direction the banana had come from.
US: We are right here, Skinny Pig. We are RIGHT HERE. You see those two enormous bipedal mammals standing over you? That’s us. We’re doing this. Look up!
Nope, thought Skinny Pig. I’ve had a look, left and right – nothing. Nothing around. Weird.
His next emotion appeared to be fear, perhaps a rising panic that he was going to be attacked by the other pigs. He hung back, his tiny corkscrew of a tail windmilling in the breeze, ready to scarper. But there was silence. There were no other pigs around.
Shit, thought Skinny Pig, this might actually be for me …
I am not lying when I say that that pig TIPTOED towards that banana like something out of an old Warner Bros. cartoon. He made it to within grabbing distance, then, scarcely believing his luck, he bit into it, timidly at first – then desperately scoffed the lot.
We let him settle for a moment. Then we drop another banana.
There’s the same routine: confusion, terror, cartoon scuttle, scoff.
We drop another.
SKINNY PIG: Jesus, where’s that come from? It’s happened again! Bloody hell! OK, don’t panic. Just breathe. Nothing to my left, nothing to my right – nothing behind me … Ahead is all clear …
And this time, having finally exhausted all other options, he gazes up and spots us. But the look he gives us isn’t the look of a pig who knows we are feeding it, who connects the actions of the human to the dropping of the food. It’s the look of a pig that has met The Rapture. A pig so STONE-COLD STUPID, it thinks we have nothing to do with the banana downpour and are merely bystanders.
SKINNY PIG: Hey, you! Are you getting this? Can you see this? Incredible, isn’t it? There are bananas falling from the sky!
You could literally make out the shocked, gleeful expression on its face.
SKINNY PIG: Come on, guys – is that all you got? Can’t you be just a little more excited? It’s raining bananas! It’s raining fucking bananas! Get ’em. Come on, get ’em!
We drop another, and it is then that Skinny Pig goes properly loco. Gone is the reticence, and in its place, something new. Mania.
We drop another and notice he is no longer questioning where the food is coming from, or even worrying about another pig getting hold of it – he is just ramming the food into his mouth, gorging and dribbling as he does so.
Five bananas down. Ten, fifteen. He is getting cocky now, catching them on the bounce and swallowing them whole. His belly is no longer sunken, but beginning to swell and glint in the sunshine.
Twenty. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Sweet God, this pig is the Cool Hand Luke of Ratanakiri province.
After the twenty-seventh, Skinny Pig stops dead in his tracks. For a second I wonder whether he’s about to keel over. Then, he sniffs the air and lets loose the most impressive belch I’ve ever heard. The air hangs heavy with banana funk.
Twenty minutes later, Skinny Pig (thankfully Skinny no longer, so I renamed him Simon) waddled back to the group, his balls swinging in the air like dried figs. There was a certain swagger in his step. I headed back to the car, laughing, imagining his peers’ reaction on seeing him:
PIGS: Simon? SIMON? WTF? Simon, is that you? What
the fuck’s happened? You’re twice the size!
SIMON: Long story, guys. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Some crazy shit went down at the edge of the village.
PIGS: No way.
SIMON: Believe.
PIGS: Don’t leave us hanging, dude … Like what?
SIMON: Bear with me, OK, cos this is going to sound weird.
(Long dramatic pause, the other pigs lean in expectantly.)
SIMON: It just rained bananas.
ALL: Bullshit.
SIMON: For real.
PIG 1: Stop mugging us off, Simon.
SIMON: I shit you not. It rained bananas.
PIG 1: What? From the sky?
PIG 2: Where else it gonna rain from, you pig-shit thicko?
PIG 1: All right! Keep your scratchings on! Proof, Simon, or it didn’t happen.
SIMON: I got witnesses. A couple of humans saw it and everything.
PIGS: Really?
SIMON: Yep, they watched the whole thing.
PIGS: Wow, that’s incredible.
(Simon’s nemesis, an Alpha Pig named Trevor, walks in.)
TREVOR: What’s all the noise in here? Simon? Is that you? What the fuck you doing here? Get out …
SIMON: I ain’t going nowhere, Trevor.
TREVOR: What you say?
SIMON: Things are gonna change around here.
TREVOR: Like hell they are. What’s happened to you? Where your ribs gone?
SIMON: I gone got me some bananas, Trevor. From heaven.
TREVOR: You takin’ the piss out of me, Simon? Cos I am one second away from biting your ham ass.
SIMON: Be my guest, yesterday-pig.
(A brief fight ensues. There is a loud squeal. Trevor has been bitten. He runs away, terrified. Simon stands there, as the other pigs corral around him. They have a new leader now. All is happy ever after.)
I am woken from my reverie by a tap on the window. It’s Claire. I am aware I have a stupid grin on my face.
CLAIRE: You OK?
ME: Sure.
I don’t tell her I’ve been playing out an imaginary piggy power struggle in my head. I just nod.
CLAIRE: C’mon. It’s time.
Matt picked up the camera, Olly gave the thumbs-up, and Claire gestured into the distance, where a semicircle of village women were sitting, chatting.
‘Speed,’ said Matt.
I started walking towards the group, when I realized we were missing something.
ME: Where are the translators?
We were in such a remote area, we needed two translators; one to translate English into Khmer, then another who could relay Khmer into the minority Kreung dialect. I was set to be outnumbered by interpreters.
CLAIRE: I can’t see them, but don’t worry, they’re here somewhere.
Well, wherever they were, they didn’t come anywhere near us. Ever. I was walking into a tribal clearing with nothing more than an arsenal of facial expressions, some rudimentary mime and a couple of generic sound effects to make myself understood.
As I approached the women, there was a burst of chatter and high-pitched laughter. They gestured for me to sit down in front of them. I did as I was told, stiffly parking myself cross-legged at their feet.
The moment I hit the ground, I was met with the most violent stink.
‘God, what’s that smell?’ I asked, waving my hand in front of my nose in the internationally recognized mime of ‘God, that honks.’
They laughed.
Keep going, I thought. Keep going. I’m going to find out what that smell is if it kills me.
‘What is that?’ I said again, this time exaggerating my hand gestures and grimacing for comic effect.
They laughed again. The sort of laughter that isn’t travelling with you, but towards you.
I could feel a sudden damp sensation in my trousers. That’s never a positive. After a little buttock manoeuvring, it transpired I’d sat directly on a fat pig-pat, sun-baked on the outside, but still deeply gooey within. Texturally, think dung fondant.
This monumental Babe-dump had crumbled under the considerable weight of my backside and was now leaking into my combats. The Kreung were now roaring – rocking back and forth in hysterics.
As first meetings go, sure, it had none of the historic grandeur of Edison meeting Ford, or Stalin meeting Roosevelt – but, let me tell you, if you ever find yourself in a clearing with a remote hill tribe, do park up on a turd. It turns out it’s a real ice-breaker.
After the laughter came the lull. What to do? Television abhors a vacuum (as indeed does my auntie Margaret, but that’s another story), and awkward silences were simply not going to cut it. I smiled. They smiled back. I gave a thumbs-up. They did the same. There was a pause as I considered my next move. I decided to do what I do anywhere in the world when stuck for a communication inroad. I started loudly counting to ten. I raised my index finger.
ME: One!
KREUNG: One!
ME: Two!
KREUNG: Two!
Thank goodness they were going to play ball.
And on we went.
I took the glorious chorus of ‘TEN!’ as my cue to get up and, as I did, plunged my flip-flop deep into yet another voluminous turd just to my left. Once again, great peals of laughter rang out through the forest clearing. This seemed to set the template for the rest of the day. I would sit in something, knock over something, or eat something I shouldn’t, and they would roar through it all at my grotesque ineptitude.
One of the great pleasures in meeting people from different worlds is the chance you get to observe their routines, the tiny, ritualized moments that add together to make a life. The only problem comes when they invite you to participate in those routines. And so I followed the women as they went about their day – revealing, at every turn, how thoroughly ill equipped I was to be a Kreung.
– Lighting a fire? Shit at it.
– Dyeing thread? Shit at it.
– Picking vegetables? Shit at it.
– Weaving? Yep, you got it. Shit at it.
The unofficial spokesperson and de facto leader of the group was Seebagh, a fine-boned, beautiful woman of indeterminate age. She could have been anything between thirty and sixty-five. No matter. Within seconds of meeting her I was utterly in love with her. She was special.
There are people in your life, not many, whom you meet for the briefest instant, but who stay with you for ever. Seebagh was one of those people.
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so light and yet so deep, as content with herself as with the situation and circumstance she found herself in. Her voice was like a song, the words I didn’t know but the tune was familiar and reassuring; it gladdened my heart to hear it.
In contrast, I don’t think she’d ever met anyone so panoramically inept – this hulking, lumpy foreigner with zero skills and zero strength. I’m not sure whether she felt entertained by me or sorry for me, but I suspect it was a combination of the two.
For the next twelve hours we gabbled and giggled like old friends. As the sun dipped a little, she marshalled her merry band of women and led me into the forest. As she did so, she reached out and took my hand. It never ceases to make me catch my breath – that simple gesture: a stranger placing their open palm against mine and leaving it there, without agenda, awkwardness or shame.
As we walked through the boulevards of cashew trees, one of the women brought out an enormous clay pipe and sucked deep on it, wreathing the pathways with smoke.
I felt this incredible sense of sorority. Peace. My heart rate slowed, my arms relaxed and began swinging in time with my stride. My hand melted into hers – soft white and hard brown all as one. Seebagh looked at me and smiled, then picked a flower from a passing bush and put it behind my ear. We walked on.
‘I feel like I’ve known you all my life,’ I said, grinning like a loon.
She looked at me, muttered something in return, and we carried on into the forest.
It was not until m
any weeks later, once the footage had been assembled in the edit, that the translator came in to provide the subtitles. It was only then I got to understand her reply.
ME: I feel like I’ve known you all my life.
And then she speaks. The translation appears underneath.
SEEBAGH: I feel like I’ve known you all my life.
Synchronicity: the energy that comes from sharing a moment, a feeling, with a fellow human.
As I watched it on the screen, I realized I hadn’t needed the translation. I had always known, in my heart, that she had shared that moment with me.
A couple of hundred metres into the forest, Mrs Pipe came to an abrupt halt and began frantically pointing at her bosoms. I wondered if her basket strap was chafing, but kept my distance in case my instincts were incorrect. The last thing I wanted was an international incident.
Is she OK? Is she all right?
The others soon followed suit, pointing to their bosoms. What? What were they trying to tell me? Was there something wrong with my bosoms? I looked down. Both jugs present and correct. Still in a bra, still under wraps. Definitely not out and about in the open. Tick. I had signed my BBC Safeguarding Trust Modules, you see, and was very aware that exposing yourself to hill tribes in rural South East Asia was not the sort of behaviour likely to be looked on favourably by the Corporation’s documentary department.
These Safeguarding Trust Modules came into force around 2008, and took the form of an online multiple-choice question-and-answer quiz. They were developed to ensure that producers showed footage in the same order as it was shot – putting an end to the occasional, but misleading, time-shifts seen in the now infamous footage of Her Majesty the Queen.
Even though these questions were for members of the production team, for some reason presenters were, for a short time, required to complete them too. In fact, if you didn’t complete them and get your mandatory passcode, you were not allowed to proceed with the shoot. These modules featured questions such as:
