Saiy and the Footbag

Cambodian’s have a version of hacky sack called a “saiy” (use your best Chinese accent). It’s a funky little device with a spring on one end and feathers sticking out the other. The rules seem rather universal – stand in a circle and kick it back and forth. The lightness and aerodynamics make it great for one-hit zinger’s across a large circle, but make it fairly unruley for any kind of stylish footwork.

So today I decided to introduce the footbag to my esteemed village development committee. I have a sweet little leather pigskin I sewed together with dental floss and filled with coarse sand and I passed it around for inspection before standing up and giving a little display of fancy footwork. In time no at all I had probably one of the most unique hacking circles ever established: two men with prosthetic legs, one man with only one hand, another one-legged man who was also extremely cross-eyed, a Cambodian pastor, two ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers, a communist labor camp survivor, and one big white guy (me).

It was quite the game with the one-armed man making fun of the one-legged guys, and the one-legged guys taking off their prosthetic legs and using as bats to hit the hack (hey, there’s no rule against holding your leg in your hand to hit the footbag right?). Pretty soon the Cambodian heat had us all dripping with sweat and we called it a game. I have a hunch though, that I’ll be teaching a few grown men how to sew footbags…