Kerfuffle In The Jungle
Kerfuffle n. (Cur-fuff-ul)
1. A small mishap or problem.
2. A collection of travelers, squares, freaks, hairies, dykes and fairies, setting off into the jungles of Cambodia in search of a place they have never been, yet inexplicably miss.
It’s 5am. The sun is beginning to rise behind a nearby mountain, causing the jungle to glow with the earliest light of day.
There is no stillness though. No roosters crow. No birds chirp. What echoes through the trees in their stead is a scratched soul sample, something from Stax, something old, but my mind can’t place it.
Before I can plumb the depths of my memory the tune morphs into something akin to an aluminum factory again and I mentally phase it out.
The sound, I can’t bring myself to call it music, pours thunderously from a wall of aged, dusty speakers, arranged in haphazard piles on either side of a makeshift DJ booth. The DJ, an Australian with a handlebar moustache, reigns on his throne from atop a neon-lit Volkswagen bus, his exaggerated movements subtly masking the ‘Play’ button simplicity.
The sound shifts from a Ray Charles sample to a hard Australian house beat and the crowd, what motley stragglers have stuck it out, react accordingly. Writhing and dancing in a haze of kicked up Cambodian dust they could be savages a thousand years ago. Faces painted, smeared with colors and mud, drinking thirstily from any cup available. Anything to get the taste of dust out of their mouths.
The residents of this lost tribe call it ‘The Kerfuffle In The Jungle’. ‘Fuffle’ if you’re into the whole brevity thing. A weekly woodland gathering of miscreants, malcontents, tourists, and club kids. Fueled by MD and snake whiskey, the small clearing bursts to life each week, attracting hundreds to this remote corner of the Kingdom.
The first thing you notice on the way in, besides the uneasy river crossing, is the ferris wheel. There’s not a decent hospital for six hours, but there in the middle of the jungle, just clearing the banyan trees, a full sized ferris wheel.
Ancient wrought iron, painted and repainted a hundred times, yet still managing to look rusted through.
Four stories tall, it towers over the clearing, providing a pinwheel backdrop for the DJ. The brave, made braver by circumstance, clutch their travel insurance cards to their chests and lock themselves inside. The disinterested Khmer-Carny, lazily lights a cigarette as car after car of screaming foreigners hurtles past his head.
Fire-dancers twirl flaming staffs, hoops and batons in a haze of kerosene smoke, fouling the already dirty air. The smudges and burns blackening their contorting bodies are their badges of honor. They wear them proudly, masochistically, yet the crowd still feels tinged by guilt. Responsible, somehow, through their mere observance.
Wishing for something to take the taste of dirt and kerosene off my lips, I rifle my pockets to buy a drink. Discarding my Dollars and Riel, useless in this monopolized jungle economy, I scrape together my last purple funny-monies and set off through the crowd.
Heavy with dust and cigarette smoke, the air near the front feels leaden. Unfazed, the die hards are pressed up, as if praying to the Kabba-sized cube of speakers.
Pressing my way through the mass of bodies I am slowly painted by them in acrid sweat and booze.
Those that have not eloped to the bushes in two’s, (or more) for some respite from the sound, have either fallen where they stood, or remain in the fray.
Some poor souls who have fallen, exhausted, inevitably sorry, dusty sights, lie facedown in the fine dirt. The only indication of life – a small cloud of dust from each breath and a half empty bottle of water set next to them by their still raving trip-buddy.
So goes a good deed in a weary world.
A seemingly trance-like state has descended on those still standing. Moving rhythmically for hours, their bodies in a constant state of flow, processing and absorbing the myriad substances coursing through their sometimes scarred veins.
They seek to undo themselves. To remove, at great lengths, the trappings of their own world and live anew, if only for a night, and if only until the drugs wear off.
In a world where even billionaires answer to the board, these may be the freest people on earth.
Perhaps one is never truly free. Everyone serves something. Love, money, power. The love of money. The love of power. Yet these things matter little here in the jungle, where the birds don’t chirp.
