Adventures!

It just occurred to me that while I have a little blog and a little bit about my school to post, I haven’t written much in the past few weeks, especially about the grand adventures that I have had…

It all began in our provincial town of Svay, where my friend Deidre and I were meeting up to enjoy some ice cream and go to a party with the current VSO volunteers from the provinces. For those of you unfamiliar with VSO, it is basically the Peace Corps of Europe and Africa (maybe Asia?) with a few different rules. They can ride motos, they live by themselves, and many are working in the health sector rather than the education sector, although our host from Svay (Jan, from UK) works in the Teacher Training college and let us stay in he lovely apartment and ride around in her car! While at said party, I met up with the volunteers who live and work in my own district town (they switch from my district to another every month) as well as a few more future volunteers who will live in various places around the province. I also had some delicious pasta alfredo and garlic bread, homemade brownies, and, in true volunteer fashion, a little beer. There was also a bit of culture sharing, considering the Peace Corps volunteers were the only Americans at the party! The others were from the Netherlands, the UK, Ireland, and Kenya. I spent a good portion of the evening learning Irish square dancing, which I never knew was so difficult, and enjoying the company of people who share the same native language as myself. In life here, it sometimes gets tiresome to speak with nearly perfect grammar, slowly and loudly, no slang involved…

The evening ended with some CNN TV covering what else but financial crisis and campaigning, and a pleasant sleep in a very cool indoor room with two different fans. We woke up with porridge (porridge!!) on the stove, and ate, four Peace Corps Volunteers and a really awesome VSO, with a spot of tea and some bananas. Deidre and I saw the boys home and then took off on borrowed bikes to shop a bit before returning and cooking a fully loaded omelet and French fries with our new friend. We also ended up with “The Killing Fields” on the TV – an amazing movie that documents some of the horrors that the Khmer Rouge inflicted on the country that I live in now. I recognized some bits from the movie from things that my family had told me, things that I read in books, but the story is vivid and poignant on the screen. I was also surprised to learn that part of the storyline of the movie involved the Province that I currently live in – he travels through my district and the nearby temple to reach the haven of the Thailand border. I must saw, however, that the footage of this sojourn looks nothing like the landscape that I see when I make the similar journey. I do not fault the movie, though, because the storyline is wonderful and well-told despite the limitations of the time period (the movie was made in the early 80s, when the regime was barely over).

But now for the exciting part of the story – the next morning I woke up, enjoying the delightful porridge again, as much as I could anyway…there were some tummy issues over the weekend…and Deidre and I went out again from some more biking and town-seeing. The pleasant day was shocked a bit when, fairly near to Jan’s house, a guy on a moto bike turned to look at Deidre and slammed into my front tire. I fell, braced myself with my wrist, and was a little too shaken to realize that my bike wasn’t functioning correctly. But fear not, because the local bike repair man quickly rescued my bike and saved me from the help of the many spectators, fixing it to a ride-able state for just a little cash, while Deidre got some ice for my troubled wrist.

In turns out, after a ride to the 10k away Monkol Borei hospital with melting ice dripping over my clothes and my apologies being cut off by Jan the Driver, after some confusing conversations with the new temporary PCMO with a Georgia-the-country-not-the-state accent about where I am and where she is, after some X-Rays with a man very pleasantly surprised with my little bits of Khmer and some bandages from the doctor who had come in on his day off, that it was only a sprain, and I had a pretty amazing looking set of bandages – so much so that Deidre, who came with, and Dan, who rode over to check out the situation, burst out laughing almost to tears at first site of my exiting the exam room. Then they took that picture…

And then I went home. But wait…there’s more! Because of my tummy issues (hint: they didn’t leave a pleasant look or smell in le toilet) and my little accident, I got pulled down to Phnom Penh for a medical visit – my first ever! The PCMO called me after school (around 11) on Tuesday, and told me to come down right away. I was a little bit shocked, both at the request and at the time of day (usually, the taxis that I want to take are early in the morning, almost never around lunch time), but somehow I found a driver, got down to Svay, and began the 7 hour journey down to the Penh. Yep, 7 hours or more. I left my site around 11:30/12, and arrived in Phnom Penh after 8. I read an entire book and took a few naps along the way – it was less packed than a usual taxi – plus I was awake long enough to hear (I’m pretty sure) the 5 other men in the car discussing the “pretty girls” around Svay.

But then, Phnom Penh.

Notable moments:
I was eating at a little Italian place called Le Duo, nibbling on some pizza and enjoying the scenery (the place looks like a poster of the Sistine chapel, with a giant screen print hanging on the ceiling and busts in the style around the warm clay-colored walls. It is all outdoor dining, and a shady full-sized pool is nestled on one side of the restaurant), when I noticed a bit of commotion between the servers and a table near to me. I watched the two Khmer men chat for a while at a table for 8 before I saw them jump up and turned to see a very cool looking white man stroll in with an entourage, his importance obvious. He wore a black polo shirt with is collar up near his ears and shrugged off his leather jacket before sitting at the head of the table and nonchalantly ordering his red wine and antipasto. His cool aura was only emphasized by the nervous jitters of his many companions, the same Khmer men, another (less important) white man, and a few women who weren’t Khmer but definitely Asian, and certainly wealthy. There isn’t a punch line to this story…it is just an observation of the people that I saw that evening – much different from myself… and they had the sharply dressed waiters, with their crisp white shirts and red ties and black vests, in a frenzy.

There is a KFC with very good fried chicken and mashed potatoes (with gravy!) and cole slaw. I noticed (there may have been two visits that helped me realize this) that the workers there are probably very well paid because they all speak English and that is a very highly-regarded trait here. They were also very nice and helped me because I was still wearing my wrist brace and couldn’t do much with my hand. While I was there, I ordered a combo meal that came with the chicken and the fixins, but I saw very few Khmer people who did the same. Most ordered a big plate of chicken and some sort of beverage, which they ate with massive amounts of mild chili sauce and ketchup. When I went in the evening, the place was packed with Khmer people – and from what I saw, the majority was more than a little wealthy. My little Khmer bike didn’t fit in with all the motos, just like it didn’t fit in at Le Duo, or the Lucky Supermarket, or most of the places that I wanted to eat at.

Phnom Penh is expensive if you are a Volunteer.

The Golden Gate Hotel chain does laundry for free, which is awesome. They also had a fridge, so I got to store and enjoy the chocolate that I received from my mom at a cool and un-melted temperature. The dark Bliss chocolate was my favorite, although I discovered that my tummy couldn’t handle as much as I wanted to…and it may have made me a little bit sick. Either way, I loved it and would always appreciate more. The rest of the chocolate is being saved for this evening, Halloween night.

Speaking of Halloween, it has been quite an adventure explaining this holiday to the Cambodian people that I know. My family thought it was ridiculous and the teachers at my school couldn’t stop laughing about full grown people dressing up like ghosts and witches and famous people and animals and going out to beg for candy at night. However, it was a nice test (that I passed…) of my skill with the Khmer language, and my explanation of it in front of all the teachers at the monthly meeting yesterday was quite a hit given my…umm…outgoing nature and avid excitement over this silly little holiday. I look forward to enjoying it this evening with my friends in the provincial town…

Random.

Interesting points about the day:

I read an entire 500 page (Harry Potter like) book in the space between a toast-with-peanut-butter-and-strawberry-jam-breakfast and lunch.

My little sister had an IV put in on our dining table and rested there for the evening…and she is carrying the silly thing around with her as she goes about her normal activities. I know she must be very sick in order for her to allow this kind of treatment.

My other little sister is reading the “Fair Trial Handbook,” dually written in Khmer and English and just asked me how to pronounce the words ‘detained,’ ‘custody,’ and ‘trial.’

My grandmother just came into my room and told me to close my door after looking under my bed with a flashlight. This is not an unusual event, though tonight she actually gave me an explanation. What is it, you ask? Well, she was checking to make sure a gangster (in Khmer, bong tom, bong toet, or, big older brother, little older brother) hadn’t snuck silently through the locked gate while we were eating dinner 20 feet away and somehow made it up to my room where he hid under the bed and was planning to choke me when I went to sleep. She even clutched her throat to demonstrate what was going to happen and made the matching sounds with her elder voice. Twice.

Lots of things sound the same to me in Khmer…including the words for: fork, wet, and pretty clothes; small, fat, cheap, shop, and short; dog, clever, crazy, lazy, and borrow, holiday, mine, sleep, pretty, and trash. My family laughs at my frustration often. They continued to laugh when we sat down so that I could begin to chart some of the levels of the verbs; for example, the word ‘eat’ is actually six words for six different classes of people: The King, Monk, grandparents and oldest aunts/uncles, people who are older, people who are younger, and animals/children. And they laughed yet more when I tried to make a fairly complete family tree, and having completed my mom’s side of 4 sisters and their full families, children, sexes, ages, names, and places of residence, I asked how many brothers and sisters my dad had and the answer was…10. A huge family, and lots of complicated answers that I may or may not get clarification on…Yikes.

A sort of Blog about school!

I didn't originally write this as a blog, but since so many people wanted to know about my school, here are my current observations (I wrote them in my work journal to help me sort some things out). Enjoy!

Student and School Observations:

It has been an interesting week of teaching, especially considering the week of absence I had because of my medical leave in Phnom Penh. Plenty has happened, though, since I have been here. I have introduced myself to the entire 10th Grade class, as well as a couple 11th Grade classes, one Grade 12 class, and a set or two of random students while watching a game of football in the school grounds. With my family also being in school, I have somehow attracted the attention of a few brave 8th Grade boys and my observations of some teachers have exposed me to a couple classes of the young Grade 8.
I am at once impressed and unimpressed by the levels of the students in the school. There are a few stand-outs in any given class, those who have obviously been taking private classes and those who have the ambition to work in nearby Banteay Chhmar, Siem Riep, or Svay/Battambang as translators or tourism facilitators. There are a lot of NGO opportunities up here, and I think the drive is more than average for that kind of work. But for all of the students that are amazingly proficient already, there are somewhere between 5-10 more that can barely speak, listen, or write the language, especially with me in the front of the class intimidating them.
But the students generally appear to have the things that they need to learn – Many have recently acquired the EFC book of their level, and they all seem to have a notebook, pen, and clothes to wear. I do wonder why I have only ever seen one student with a pair of glasses, and hope to find a way to find out more about the vision of my students. I remember that my optometrist back home has traveled to other countries to help people with their vision, and am considering contacting her for connections to other organizations like that. I am guessing, though, that there is a certain lack of motivation from family pressure and the life that I see with my family – the school-aged children have the most work to do both in school and in the home. Plus, the book is far more difficult than the skill level of the students, and I imagine that that is more frustrating than the less-than-adequate teachers and buildings.

One thing that I have begun to notice is that students have a frightening amount of free time, and while sometimes that would be great, it seems that the students are bored to tears by their hour or two hour long breaks in the middle of a couple of lessons. It is not an easy problem to fix, because many teachers are unmotivated to make it to class with work that pays as little as this does. Plus, sometimes the trip can be a bit harrowing, with the muddy roads or any other certain circumstances. Either way, if the teachers don’t show up, the students hang out, and they never know before-hand whether or not they will have a teacher. I also imagine that there is a little bit of confusion in the first place from the students’ viewpoint considering they never have to move from class to class and as their break comes to a close, they see a teacher headed to their class and run inside to their seats as quickly as they can.

The school itself seems fairly well organized, with a director that is there almost every day and Panha the disciplinarian who keeps things under control with his iron fist. The buildings are well organized and labeled, the classes ranging from 40-50 students with usually enough desks for everyone, and a new building under construction. The newer buildings for the older students are on the other side of the flag and football field from the office, and are luxurious with marker boards, cement walls and floors, and very little noise pollution to interfere with class. The classrooms on the other side, though, are poorly constructed wood with open ceilings that let noise filter through almost unbearably. Between the open ceilings, tin roof, shoddy shutters, and various holes in the walls between classes, it is a wonder that any concentration happens, well, ever. In addition to this (as if it isn’t enough), all of these rooms are strictly chalk and the vast majority make the words on the board barely visible. No matter the building or classroom, there is almost nothing on the walls, save the occasional red and blue Angkor Wat flag or framed photos of the King and his parents.

The campus is otherwise beautiful, though; the gated entrance is framed with pretty trees that most of the older students park their motos under, leading to the flag surrounded by well-trimmed shrubbery that the 8th graders like to congregate in. There is a well-used football field that is decent (save the occasional puddle or small herd of water buffalo), a beautiful basketball court that I have never seen used, and apparently a place to play volleyball, though I haven’t really found that yet. Unlike other schools that I have seen, there are plenty of places to put (and burn) the rubbish, which is a huge boon here. There is also a well-stocked library, which is all textbooks, but I hope that I will be able to provide some resources for both teachers and students, because as of now the room is well organized and may even have a little extra room for some more supplies.

However lovely and wonderful I find this school (which is a lot – I love the people and the administration tons), the main thing that I see is a lack of pride in the institution and its teachers. Whenever I speak to the school director, which is fairly frequently given his house’s proximity to mine (he lives right next door), he usually tells me about awful the road is from home to school – either too bumpy and muddy from the rain, or too dry and dusty from the (very little) traffic. I’m on a National Road to basically nowhere, so the traffic here is nothing compared to when I was on the road to PP and all of the places I needed to go involved me facing hardcore traffic on my tiny little bike. In my feeble attempts to tell him that there are, in fact, unpaved and bumpy roads where I come from…umm, Iowa...he laughed at me with apparent disbelief. Granted, I never had to ride a mountain bike in a warm confining Khmer skirt on a hot and tropical day over a bumpy and muddy/dusty road a mile and a half to school four times a day…but…
Well, the point that I am getting to is that it seems to me that in America, even the worst schools find something to pride themselves in, and I want that for this school. I want the school director and the students and the teachers to say where they live with pride and confidence instead of always focusing on the things that could theoretically drive someone away. The school is still recovering from the lost of a VSO Volunteer 2 weeks into his service because of his own lack of preparation and (I think) a drug problem, so they are focusing on all the things that could drive me away. I want for them a positive spin of the truth and some awareness that his flight was his fault and not theirs.

A party and some gangstas

10-9

So I was invited to a party. Yesterday, on my visit to the district office (a very nice building with a really sweet older woman who was a vice something something for the education of the district and nice older man with tattoos on his hands and forehead…subtle protection tattoos who couldn’t speak English but spoke slow Khmer for me and told me he spoke Thai as well) I was somehow invited to the party the next morning at 8. That is…8 in the morning not 8 in the evening. Imagine my surprise! I wasn’t really sure what the thing was for until about half way in, either. I went, in my Khmer skirt and a simple polo, not really sure to expect, and was immediately taken aback by the lack of women in the audience. I was seated with the aforementioned lady, who was looking well with some fake hair piece and a pretty pinkish Khmer shirt, who sat by the plump lady in a similar but more gold shirt and who wore lots of makeup on her wide eyed face who I knew later to be the new district chief’s wife. They ended up sitting on the stage behind the guest of honor, who sat behind a table with a flower arrangement on it. Like at swear in, the important folks never travel alone…and this guy was no exception. I found out later that he is the chief of the entire province, somewhere along the lines of a governor I suppose, and after the speeches were over he came over to greet me (personally…because I am white). The speeches were long…very very very long – first the current district governor, then the new district governor, who we were having the party for and who is a very nice guy that I met the day before, then the important chief guy.

Once again, there is absolutely no etiquette for things like this. The military men behind the guy behind the flowers chatted together and talked on their phones…the audience rarely paid attention (I was no exception, especially considering I could only understand a select few words out of any given half hour speech), but still 2 and a half hours passed by and we were all sitting still. I was actually sitting now by another vice something, an older guy who has a really gentle demeanor and told me more than a few times that I could come to him with any problems that I had.

Throughout the speeches, I was watching the party preparations going on outside the door, a spread of tables under a tent (with fans!) with chairs covered with fancy Khmer fabric and silverware and glasses set out on top of the lacey tablecloths. Then…I saw the men begin carrying out cases of the most expensive beer you can buy here, and setting about half a case on each table. Given there were more tables than I could count, even outside the speech room…that’s a lot of alcohol. On top of that, once we sat down (with the same lady of course, because she must adore me…), each of the tables received a huge bottle of Johnny Walker and a bunch of soda water. When I sat down, it was only 11 in the morning. The majority of the bottle was gone by about noon. And then there was the food. In front of me there was: a plate full of chicken cut in the way that only Khmer people can, full of bones and strange parts that never get eaten in the States, a similar plate of duck meat, some brown soup with large abnormal chicken pieces in it, sour vegetables that don’t sound appetizing but are actually delicious in breakfast sandwiches, baby shrimp things, baby fried frogs, and some bug that was the delicacy of the table. There were some sauces, rice of course, and basically anything you could every want.

And it gets better. One of my fellow guests was a guy who wore Ray Charles shades around, and I thought he was a very suitable look alike. He would cheers someone and show a bright silver tooth revealed only with the broad smile that he had. Cheers are fairly constant, and you stand up and if the person is of a higher rank than you, you hold your glass with two hands and make sure that it clicks lower than their glass. As a teacher…I am basically of a low rank. As a volunteer, making next to nothing…well. Let’s just say that I can tell that I am surrounded by wealth because I had a small figure in comparison.

The morning ended with a little bit of entertainment as well. They had begun playing some music, though there wasn’t any dancing (maybe because I could count the female guests with a set of hands), and I was sitting with my counterpart asking about a few Khmer words and watching a few obviously army men carrying ice around as servers, an entertaining site given the uniform that reveals intense arm muscles often littered with tattoos, when the chief of police sat down right next to me (drunk) and began asking me some questions. I had met the guy yesterday, as I also met the new district chief, and he was beyond excited because I asked a little question about the police force of the district in order to break his silence at my presence. It was a little awkward…I’ve gotten used to the gender roles here and am unaccustomed to any sort of contact, but I was stuck between my counterpart/translator, who usually talks so close to me I wonder if he can hear okay, and the chief whose blood alcohol level (not to mention the midday heat) lowered his spatial reasoning and who was also very close. I laughed it off because he was asking interesting question about why I was there and why on earth I would want to come to a place with a history like Cambodia’s…but then there was an odd moment where he asked me a more difficult question and as I thought and smiled he tapped my nose with his finger and burst out laughing. Very odd. I went home after that, and enjoyed a leisurely afternoon.

Until…my brother knocks on my door and asks if I want to play volleyball. But of course! We head over around the corner to the court (with a regulation height net on a dirt court) and play on, and soon we are joined by a few guys and then more, and then more. A few of them play, but not many, probably because the barang has all of their attention. I must have heard the word 30 times, even more. But the game was nice, good exercise, and the ball, because it was semi-flat most of the time, left a nice little bruise on my arm. Oh…but the one last detail of that is that I’m sort of sure that some of the guys were gangsters. I can’t be sure, of course, because I’m guessing that it would be a little inappropriate to ask, but they had feathery longer hair, the typical sign of such a guy, and one of them looked like Tupac. I realize how ridiculous that sounds, that long feathery hair = gangsta…but, that’s Cambodia.

B-day!

The current volunteers warned us that the first few days at site would be strange ones…and they weren’t kidding! It has been an odd start (not a bad start, just an odd start) compounded only by the fact that my birthday was today. But where to begin…after swear in, I said some goodbyes and caught a bus up to Battambong, where a bunch of us got together and enjoyed one last night of food and ice cream (Battambong has this wonderful old ice cream shoppe, where you can point to a picture and you get exactly what you see…even though the cherries are actually gummy and the whipped cream is something that I didn’t expect). We also did a little bit of shopping considering Battambong is the 2nd or 3rd biggest town in the country, and it has a lot of things that my town doesn’t. Thinking back on it, I should have grabbed some peanut butter, but I just got a tin of Jasmine tea instead.

The four volunteers from my province grabbed a taxi and squeezed into the backseat all together in the very cozy style of Kampuchea. Usually in the backseat with the four adults there is a child or two standing or sitting in laps, but I didn’t experience that until I went on to my town. Taxis, which are usually the same style and color as my old grey Camry from the states, are packed with somewhere between eight and ten people (with one person sharing the same seat as the driver, which is actually on the wrong side of the car given the side they drive on) and gender roles are shattered as the sexes jam together in the tiny car. The mini bus taxis can usually put 16-20 people and it continues to amaze me. In the last min bus taxi I was in, someone crawled through the back window in order to sit next to me because the rest of the car was so full. It is very a very frugal method, given the price of gas is about a buck and a half for a single liter.

I went to school the next day. Classes haven’t started yet, even though they probably should have, but the teachers go and the students go, all in uniform, and do…stuff. I’m still having a little trouble figuring out just what is going on, but I’ve gathered that there are announcements and some registering and cleaning and book-getting on the students’ part. And for the teachers…just…getting to know each other and visit I think. They show up sometimes at 7, or 8, or whenever and just chat and then go home. The students too also do much more visiting than anything else, though private classes are in full effect and my little sister goes to at least three per day. In this nice visiting time, I have met several different people, including the entire female staff (about 7 people out of more than three times that for the male staff), a young geography teacher (by the way, no one at my school can actually say geography) who is taller than me, a very rare occurrence, and a very wonderful English co-teacher who has been absolutely wonderful these past couple of days.

On Tuesday, when I was sitting in the office watching the students move about and being watched just the same, someone walked into the office and I heard “Khmer-American.” Strangely, a young 25 year old guy walked in (wearing a COLLEGE T-shirt from Animal House and khaki shorts and tennis shoes…That outfit screams American…), sat down, and spoke accent-free American English to me. Amazing. He’s visiting his family, he says, because his parents fled in the 80s and moved to Florida, and now they are coming back. He had been in country just a few days, and I could tell. I’ve been around Americans who have grown as I have the past two months, who have adjusted at basically the same rate and who were pretty calm to begin with. I could tell that this guy (Sophon was his name) was American because I was sitting calmly and waiting for nothing and he was a whirlwind of activity even as he sat in his chair. I’ve forgotten how fast things are over there – life here moves considerably more slowly. The best evidence of this is that I should be teaching and instead spend most of my time visiting and sleeping and talking and eating. And eating. I’m fairly certain that a Khmer person’s joy comes from the knowledge that the family and the guest is well fed for every hour of any given day. (a note about the chalkboard photo...during a teacher meeting, they listed all of the teachers under their discipline, but for my column, he erased the E that should have stood for English and wrote my name and nickname in All Caps instead. I thought it was funny enough for photographic evidence).

Side bar: another odd bit of news is that I found out my bed has termites or ants or something and they bit me while I was napping. They are little red ants with big black booties and I do not like them at all. I took pleasure in dowsing them in my bug spray.

Side bar 2: There is some information floating around about unrest on the Thai border because of the Preah Vihear temple and disputes about who it belongs to, but Peace Corps is keeping us informed and has all the knowledge we need. I am super close to the Thai border, but I am not in the same province as the Temple and am totally safe! In addition to that, my safety within the district is basically assured because I have had 3 meetings with the district office, commune office, and police office, and every single one of the officials has assured me that if I ever have a problem to contact them immediately and they will fix it. The police also requested that if I ever go long distances to tell them so that they can accompany/protect me…and then the head policeman came to my house right around dinner time…

Limbo and my life in it

10.4.2008
So much has happened in the past few days that I barely know where to begin. Life here in Cambodia has taken some sort of turn that has thrown me into a new dimension and I – wow. Things aren’t that bad. After all, as of some 12 hours ago, I am officially a volunteer. I find that pretty amazing and wonderful. On top of that, I will be celebrating the number 22 here in a few days (however, it will be by myself because it will be the third day at site…) and on top of that, life is great because the weather is cooler than usual and things have gone pretty well. Of course, the fact that I am at my new site means that I am not at my training site, which means that I’ve said my goodbyes to my old family in a tearful (on my part alone, mind you) goodbye. It’s true, I cried a bit, mainly because I saw Deidre’s grandmother struggle to hold back the tears as I went to visit for the last time and say goodbye. A few tears escaped her wrinkled face and her leathery hand held tight onto mine as she smiled with some broken Khmer escaping her lips. I also saw Dan’s usually boisterous mother fresh from a bout of tears with a ruby red nose and a weak and shaky smile as I gave her my last gift before I went to eat my last meal with my training family. Seeing strong women cry breaks my heart more than anything, so the day got gradually more difficult as the time slipped by. Seeing my room for the first time devoid of mattress and mosquito net and Kelsey stuff was also remarkable and I am wondering who will now occupy the life-less space. But. My family didn’t cry, and I gave a little hug to my host mother, and a sort of hug to my big sister, little sister, and (very culturally inappropriate) big brother…in public and in front of the other volunteers. He had (as per mother’s orders) driven the moto with all my things to the house where our taxi was coming to, as I, of course, rode the Khmer bike right next to him.

Koy, my brother, did not shed a tear, nor did my mother or sisters or father or other brothers. I understand though, having found out just a day before in a simple mother-daughter chat that my host parents were ordered to marry by Pol Pot. I didn’t know it, but apparently this was a common occurrence and they have stayed married and (I think) happy since about 1976. They tell me that they don’t love each other, but I think they laugh and joke around too much to not have some sort of affection for one another, especially 9 (plus me) kids later.

And then there were the bittersweet final moments of seeing Volunteers today. This morning consisted of swear in with me wearing an absolutely stunning hot pink lacey top and Khmer skirt and being sworn in amid school directors from across the country with their Provincial Office of Education reps as well. Our esteemed guests were the acting Ambassador from the Embassy, the country director of Peace Corps, and the brand new Minister of Education, who is amazing! First of all, he brought a posse of 8 some men who sat very officially behind the triad-of-important-people table, one of which was having a little trouble staying awake, just for awhile. Second, his speech was truly amazing, and he broke away from his Khmer to speak in sincere English about how for years the education system was destroyed because both buildings and teachers were targeted by the Khmer Rouge regime. He laughed with us about America and his travels across the country and told us about how he started, and yes…I mean started, the entire Ministry of Education. If there is one official that I would like to sit with for coffee…

One of the things I found amusing about the ceremony was the media, because there is very little sense of personal space with them. The videographers walked in front of the entire room to tape bits of speeches, audience members, and us (lots of tape of us…). In the states…I don’t think many of the cameras would work as close up as they were. Another interesting tidbit was the oath for swear in…because one sentence we all forgot half way and ended up needing it repeated… but then it was over and we took a few pictures and ate grapes and chocolate pastries. Life was good, and then we said some goodbyes of our friends considering we will not see anyone not from our district for a full four months. Because I lie so far north, and the majority of the volunteers live to the south…well, you get the idea. It is surreal. And things are about to get a lot more quiet.

It is exciting to think about carving out a little niche for myself. My own room, unpacked and mine for more than a month. But it also nerve-wracking, because life is serious now – constant image management, school work, teaching, learning, studying, living. I think it is…something…that as a gal fresh out of college, I am going to learn how to live entirely by myself for the first time right here in Kampuchea. The majority of the other volunteers know about rent and work and work and life and I will know it first off here. I’ll come back in two years and have to learn how to function all over again, that time without the Peace Corps rules and protection. I dread that a little, similar to the way that I dread coming back in Iowa winter given the fact that I can freeze with a simple Air-Con. I hope that I will once again be able to enjoy the snow (and milk…because the milk here comes from a can and is so thick and sugary that I can practically feel the cavities forming).

It's like Christmas!

9.27.08

It has been an eventful and uneventful past couple of days. I say this because, while there is a very important holiday right now, the holiday makes things basically stop around here. Training is almost over, and things have calmed down to a point where we have all begun to wonder about how slow our lives will be at site…and how many books we will read in our tremendously clean room with our freshly scrubbed skin still gleaming.

But that will be a blog that I will write when I am bored to the point of tears within my first three months on “lockdown” at site. As per Peace Corps policy, we aren’t allowed to leave our provinces for the first three months, which is a little hard given the holidays, though understandable because they don’t want us to run away and never become acclimated to our new home.

Anyway…the current holiday: Pchum Ben. This means something along the lines of gathering for making balls of rice. It is a 15 day holiday that culminates with a big 3 day party (which is next week). But there is lots of fun to be had before that. For example, 2 days out of the past week, I was up at 3:30 in the morning, enjoying the predawn dark and traveling to a nearby wat for something called ba bai bun, or throwing rice balls. Allow me to explain. This is a holiday that is devoted to your ancestors, so in order to feed the ancestors that are stuck as spirits and help them to get to a better life, you give them some food to eat and some prayers that can assist them in moving on. You of course have to go to the wat, and hope that your ancestors find you there so that they can partake of the food that you give them (because if they aren’t your family or in your mind, they can’t eat the rice), and the only time that they are allowed to leave the spirit world is right before dawn, hence the time.

So here I am, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I go with my brother and sisters to the wat in the dark with some of their friends that I don’t know and a friend of my sister’s who, despite the lack of relation to the family, eats and sleeps and showers in the house often. We make it to the wat and go into the eating room, which has its own shrine and lots of space, grab a few things and begin rolling rice balls and distributing sugar cane and candy into bowls. We light some incense and all the people get up and walk to the temple where the little god houses are set up…and then…we throw the little rice balls, or the sugar or candy or water, on, to, or around each of the 8 altars as we walk around in a circle 2 or 3 times. And then we leave and go back to bed. Well, we left after we visited the weird elk-like thing at that particular wat…one of the many things that I have yet to figure out about this place (the elk is wearing enough fur to survive an Iowan winter).

I’m not sure that anyone gives food to their ancestors every one of the fifteen days – maybe every other day at most, but I have gone once with my family and once with another family. The second time I watched the sun come up and was stunned by the beauty of the palm trees silhouetted on the deep blue, then purple, then deep red and orange and all shades sky. The four of us that went mutually decided that Cambodia has better sunrises and sunsets. But…we haven’t seen anything else for over 2 months…
One day after class I came home to find the house in somewhat of a frenzy. We had to go to the wat. Everyone put on their best clothes, including a long Khmer skirt and a white shirt (the nice lacey ones of course), and we took tons of food to a wat that I hadn’t yet been to. We had a private little ceremony at the shrine in between the monk’s quarters where we offered all of this food and fanta and cash to the head monk of the wat and he prayed and threw water on us (it reminded me of the first day in kampong Tralach when they threw all of the water and flowers on us and we could barely contain our nervous laughter) and then supposedly ate some food and gave the rest back to us. We had this huge feast as the monk and a few nuns (who are the old ladies of the village, living at the wat with their shaved heads all in white) looked on with some degree of amusement about this foreigner that they had never seen before.

Another big event that strangely coincided with events at the wat was our Community Activity. It is like our teaching practicum except…well, you understand. My group decided to go to one of the local wats and hold a music teaching session – Matt in rhythm, Steph with the scale, Adrian with instrumentals, and me teaching a couple easy songs like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Row Row Row Your Boat. They sang the best they could, and did all the motions that I made up…granted they didn’t speak English at all. We culminated by singing all kinds of random American and Khmer songs and the kids smiled and loved it and went on to the next group’s project…food.

Food is always an interesting thing around here. Because it is the holiday season, there were tons of people at the wat already, and a few of the other volunteers made some spaghetti and bread and green beans that they gave to the children and then to the monks.

Scene: Around 10 in the morning, in the big eating room at the wat, which has a shrine to Buddha at the front and colorful paintings completely covering the walls. There are little flags of cloth strewn in lines throughout the room and straw mats on the ground. The room is full of people wearing white shirts and scarves, sitting a little haphazardly throughout the room on the mats, having already removed their shoes. An older man previously dragged us into the middle of the room and made us sit down near the front and we do, sitting with our feet to one sit as is proper etiquette. He gives us incense, which we pray with and then put just outside the room, and we listen to some prayers on the loud speaker whose sound quality makes me shiver in distaste. We are then given a dish of rice and they motion for us to stand up and go with the crowd (which we do) to put a spoonful of rice in each of 8 or 9 big tin urns that will go to the ancestors or to the monks or both. There are some things that I just haven’t figured out yet.

Somehow we make it to the back corner of the room where we can dish out the food that was previously made by the other group of people. There are 12 perfectly portioned meals of spaghetti and sauce, with green beans and bread on three separate trays and Tara takes one, and Deidre takes one, and I take one. By now the 12 monks of the wat are all sitting in a long row perpendicular to Buddha, all in their various shades of orange robes, with the head monk the closest to the shrine. Side note: in previous visits to this wat, the head monk has been very nice and constantly pleased to see us it seems. So…the three of us with our big trays walk up towards the monks and do our best to offer it to them without breaking any major rules. Fortunately all of the older men want to help and do their best to motion to us what to do (though we still sort of bumble about and maybe or maybe not successfully giving the food to them). The plates are taken from the trays and placed with all of the other Khmer food (and there was tons of it) as an offering to the monks here. Prayers were said by the head monk as we all sat together in the very front row and the ladies behind us tried to distract us and talk to us as they like to do, and then the monks dug into their feast.

I hope that this is an imaginable scenario: One plate of American food that is deliciously western amid tons of Khmer food – three white girls in the front row watching and trying to figure out which monk will try the food first – young monks right in front of us that are a little unsure of the integrity of our dishes…

The head monk sampled the dish first. We noticed and gossiped together about it as we continued to watch. Then another couple of older monks (and by older I mean maybe mid 20s) also tried a bit…even to the point of going back for seconds… The courage trickled down the line and soon the monks in front of us we looking at each other as they sampled the dish at the same time. We heard later through some translation that the monks did in fact enjoy the spaghetti, though I think the fact that many of them ate more than one bite of it is perhaps a testament to the joy that they found in eating it, but it is possible that we will never know. We hope they will continue to talk about it, because we certainly did as we ate the food that they didn’t and shared with all in the room…but…why wouldn’t you, as a monk, talk about the barangs that brought the only spaghetti to the wat this holiday? By the way, the monks ate their prized bowls of spaghetti with two spoons.