Chasing Jackie
Former US First Lady Jackie Kennedy inspired a young girl to follow in her footsteps – all the way to Angkor Wat
Juli Ann Weber became a foreign correspondent specialising in international business, finance and economics while living in Asia during the 1980s. She now lives in Cambodia, where she teaches advanced English, and continues to write.
WHEN JOHN F. KENNEDY had been president of the United States, he and his glamorous wife, Jacqueline, lived in the White House. I was a teen at the time and, like many, idolised this sophisticated and elegant First Lady. So, when the widowed Mrs Kennedy appeared on the news one night in November 1967, I paid attention. There she stood, in front of these amazing carved stone towers. Jackie Kennedy was visiting Cambodia and touring the temple complex of Angkor Wat.
In that singular instant, I knew I had to go to Angkor Wat.
This wasn’t unlike me, as ten years earlier, when I was seven, I had announced that I wanted to go to China. Everyone – from my parents, teachers and classmates to relatives and neighbours – poo-pooed the idea. China was closed. No foreigners were admitted. Everyone insisted there was no way to go to China. Every time I mentioned China I’d be met with adult cautions: “Forget it! You’re not going to China.”
But China was on the other side of the world, the world was round, and if I dug a hole in the backyard, I heard that I’d end up in China. So I dug a hole. At seven, digging a hole in the backyard with a small trowel is a tedious and time-consuming undertaking. Despite digging deep, China remained far, far away. The project
ended with planting a potato, which did produce enough potatoes for one family dinner. Minor success – of a sort. As years passed, that image of Jackie Kennedy at Angkor Wat remained in my mind. So, too, did the images of China.
It took me decades to get to China. The country began opening while I was still at school, and I paid attention to progress in international relations, slow as it seemed. Eventually, after graduate school in 1981, I wound up working as a training
consultant in Indonesia. Moving to Singapore, I became a foreign correspondent, and then moved to Hong Kong.
After a few more years of working there to save up the money, in 1990 I got to China at long last. I spent several months ‘riding the rails’ around the massive country. I saw the Great Wall, the Terracotta Army in Xi’an, and so many other places seen in magazines or on television, places I had read about. It was a marvellous experience, much appreciated after waiting so many years since I tried to dig that hole to get to China.
During the years I lived in Asia, Cambodia was closed, as China once had been. The horrors of the Khmer Rouge were over, but the Vietnamese were there. Unexploded ordnance remained from the Vietnam War, as well as landmines planted border-to-border, rice paddy-to-rice paddy. It was a most perilous place. Despite meeting with people from the United Nations and various nongovernmental
With that longheld image of Jackie Kennedy at Angkor Wat clear in my mind, the die was cast
organisations, nobody could get me into Cambodia. It was locked up as tightly as China once had been. They said to forget about going to Cambodia. It would take decades to recover from the devastation of the Khmer Rouge.
My Asian adventure ended shortly after departing China on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. My father had a stroke. Returning to the US, I ‘got stuck’ there for years with one thing or another. My plans to move back to Asia kept getting derailed.
Finally, in 2015, I had had enough of living in America. Time could well be running out, and I had a ‘bucket list’ of things to do, places to go.
Cambodia came up on my radar. The country was open and eager to develop. It had monumental needs, and I could help fulfil some of them. I had taught English as a foreign language, and taught a wide variety of writing courses in various countries. There were no age restrictions on employment visas in Cambodia, unlike so many other countries.
With that long-held image of Jackie Kennedy at Angkor Wat still clear in my mind, the die was cast: move to Cambodia. The proceeds from the sale of my car paid for a plane ticket and a small amount to live on while I looked for a job.
I arrived in Cambodia on November 11, 2016, and, within two weeks, my assessment of the country’s needs had proven accurate. Part-time teaching will keep me going here in Phnom Penh, while I save for the bus fare to Siem Reap and admission fees to the Angkor complex: Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, the Roluos Group and other outposts of the splendid Khmer Empire of a millennia ago. The first night with my new students, they asked why I came to Cambodia. I told them the story of a child watching America’s First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, on the nightly news. And that I had known the moment I saw those temple towers of Angkor Wat that I must go there. I mentioned the years of living in Asia, with never a chance to come to Cambodia, to see Angkor Wat.
“Now I have arrived in Phnom Penh, and I will go to Angkor Wat. It is going to happen after keeping that image in my head for almost 50 years.
“Never give up!” I told them. “If you really want something, sooner or later you will find a way to make it happen.”
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