Friday, December 26, 2008
Christmas Day
Christmas Day was just another day in the ‘Bode, as many of us have started calling it. Since, however, “just another day” is very different from those experienced back in the world, I thought I would try and describe what normality is over here.
My alarm clock went off at 6:05. I cannot remember why I had set it to 6:05, it seemed like a good idea at the time to give me those extra five minutes of sleep. I sat up, scratched my head, and threw the sheets and blankets off of me. It was cold, and by cold I mean 20 degrees Celsius. I crawled around on the bed, fixing the covers and making sure the mosquito net was tucked under the mattress at all the right places. I then crawled under and out of it, and my feet hit the tile floor. I quickly walked to the bathroom, and used the ladle (“bowie”) to bring up water from the reservoir. I cupped my hands, and brought the cool water to face in order to wash it. When I was done, I toweled off and began to dress. Before I took any clothes off of my rack, I went and got my mosquito bat. When I shook my clothes vigorously, three mosquitoes flew out from my shirts. I killed them with the bat, and their tiny burned corpses smelled of burning hair. While I dressed, I turned on my stove in order to boil some water. When I had finished packing for school, I took the boiled water and poured into a cup that was filled with oatmeal. Expensive, Australian made oatmeal has become my favorite breakfast of late, and I buy it at the supermarket in Siem Reap. While eating the oatmeal, I turned on the radio and listened to the Australian news. Mary Shapiro is going to be the new head of the SEC, and Rudd government is defending an unpopular environmental policy. At around 7:00, the school bell rang. I turned off the radio, picked up my bag, and headed out the door.
The school is across the street from my house, so the walk only takes a couple of minutes. The students in blue and white uniforms passed me on bicycles as I walked along, and dismounted as they entered the big blue steel gate that marks the entrance to the school. I walked through the gate, and walked along the straight path that leads to the main office building. A smiling young man separated from his friends and approached me. “Hello Teacher! How are you today” he said. “I’m fine thanks, student,” I responded. “How are you?” “Yes,” he replied in the midst of a fit of giggling. He then went off to join his friends. Confused, I simply walked on.
When I got to the main office building, the students were lining up in rows around the flagpole in front of the building. I went into the office, put down my bag, and went outside to watch the students conduct the flag ceremony. The assistant school director was already outside in front of the students, and he called them all to attention. After shouting some orders, two students prepared to raise the flag. The assistant school director began singing the Cambodian national anthem very enthusiastically. “Som punté bada,” he sang very loudly, and indicated with his fists that the students should pick up where he had left off. The students chanted the rest of the words in such a mumbled and apathetic manner that I chuckled to myself. I laugh every morning at this spectacle, and it is a highlight of my day.
I waited for my co-teacher, who came along a few minutes later. We walked to the class together after he arrived, and talked about some of the things that would happen in class that day. We waited for a few minutes outside the classroom until the students had cleaned the classroom, and then we went inside. The students rose from their seats, and remained standing until we told them that they could sit down. After taking a minute to unpack my notes and books, I went to the board and wrote out the agenda for the day. I then wrote the date on the board. “Today is Thursday December 25th, 2008.” I thought about telling the class that today was Christmas, but I decided not to.
The lesson proceeded smoothly. We did some reading, went over a few vocabulary words, stressed pronunciation, and drilled the past progressive. At around 8:50, we let the students out for a break. I went to the library and talked for a few minutes with the other teachers, who were asking me what Christmas was. They had seen something about it on the television or radio, and I explained that it was a religious holiday that was about as big a deal as Pchum Ben. They understood the analogy well enough. At around 9:05, I went over to the second class. The chapter that this class was discussing had to do with advertising, and I had brought some ads from American magazines to show them was an advertisement was.
My co-teacher and I started off the lesson in the regular manner that we always do, but around 10:00 something rather unusual happened. Two other teachers appeared in the doorway of the classroom and beckoned my co-teacher to go with them. Without hesitation, Mr. Nou turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, I am busy. Can you teach the class?” He did not give me a chance to answer, as he left with the other teachers a few seconds later. Standing in the middle of the class, I turned to the students and asked them to wait for a few moments. I went outside, and noticed that none of the other classrooms had teachers in them. The students were filing out of them, and were walking towards the shed where they park their bicycles. I went back inside the class, and proceeded to teach for the rest of the time remaining. I had the students look at the advertisements I brought in groups, and helped them figure out what their purpose was. When this was concluded, I packed up my things and dismissed the students.
As I walking out of the school, I noticed that all of the teachers were playing soccer. I learned later that the reason why all of the teachers had left their classes was because the school director had left early that day. With no boss around, they decided to abandon their classes in order to go play soccer. I sighed while I watched the teachers kick the ball around. “À la Cambodgien,” I said to myself.
I walked home in a few minutes, and upon entering my room I started boiling water for a cup of tea. I swept and cleaned my room for a little while until my host mother told me that it was time for lunch. The meal was fish soup with rice. With a spoon in my right hand and a fork in my left, I ate the meal in silence with the rest of the family. I poured a helpful of chili sauce on my bowl at one point so the dish could have some flavor. After lunch, the women cleared the dishes and I began reading a copy of the New Yorker that had been sent to my by mail. You, the reader, might think that my manners are poor for not helping the women in their tasks of cooking and cleaning, but I assure you that this is not the case. I have tried many times to help cook, clean the dishes, or some other part of the women’s housework in the kitchen, but my attempts were met with firm rebuttals. I have been shooed out of the kitchen more times than I would like to admit, and I have reluctantly accepted their custom of keeping men out of their designated chores.
After reading for a while, the father of the table came to the table with a large bowl of roasted crickets. The bugs, which are about as big as your little finger, have a taste that resembles popcorn. Altogether they are not all that bad, but I cannot eat them without thinking about what they are. I watched the father as he ate an entire bowl of the little monsters.
The rest of the day was mildly uneventful. I walked over the pagoda and chatted with the monks for a little while, stopped off in a little café to have a glass of iced coffee, and went for a bicycle ride through the countryside. The only hint that indicated that it was Christmas came from something I saw on the television later that evening. On one of the variety shows, there was a singing and dancing troupe that evoked the Christmas spirit as best as a Cambodian person can. Men, dressed in white suits and red vests, and women, in red and white corset-like outfits, were holding poms poms and dancing. They were also singing about something called “crissmah.”
That was how I spent Christmas this year. It is very hard to make a big deal about it when your in the middle of rural southeast Asia, and I’ve tried not to think about it. C’est la vie.
My alarm clock went off at 6:05. I cannot remember why I had set it to 6:05, it seemed like a good idea at the time to give me those extra five minutes of sleep. I sat up, scratched my head, and threw the sheets and blankets off of me. It was cold, and by cold I mean 20 degrees Celsius. I crawled around on the bed, fixing the covers and making sure the mosquito net was tucked under the mattress at all the right places. I then crawled under and out of it, and my feet hit the tile floor. I quickly walked to the bathroom, and used the ladle (“bowie”) to bring up water from the reservoir. I cupped my hands, and brought the cool water to face in order to wash it. When I was done, I toweled off and began to dress. Before I took any clothes off of my rack, I went and got my mosquito bat. When I shook my clothes vigorously, three mosquitoes flew out from my shirts. I killed them with the bat, and their tiny burned corpses smelled of burning hair. While I dressed, I turned on my stove in order to boil some water. When I had finished packing for school, I took the boiled water and poured into a cup that was filled with oatmeal. Expensive, Australian made oatmeal has become my favorite breakfast of late, and I buy it at the supermarket in Siem Reap. While eating the oatmeal, I turned on the radio and listened to the Australian news. Mary Shapiro is going to be the new head of the SEC, and Rudd government is defending an unpopular environmental policy. At around 7:00, the school bell rang. I turned off the radio, picked up my bag, and headed out the door.
The school is across the street from my house, so the walk only takes a couple of minutes. The students in blue and white uniforms passed me on bicycles as I walked along, and dismounted as they entered the big blue steel gate that marks the entrance to the school. I walked through the gate, and walked along the straight path that leads to the main office building. A smiling young man separated from his friends and approached me. “Hello Teacher! How are you today” he said. “I’m fine thanks, student,” I responded. “How are you?” “Yes,” he replied in the midst of a fit of giggling. He then went off to join his friends. Confused, I simply walked on.
When I got to the main office building, the students were lining up in rows around the flagpole in front of the building. I went into the office, put down my bag, and went outside to watch the students conduct the flag ceremony. The assistant school director was already outside in front of the students, and he called them all to attention. After shouting some orders, two students prepared to raise the flag. The assistant school director began singing the Cambodian national anthem very enthusiastically. “Som punté bada,” he sang very loudly, and indicated with his fists that the students should pick up where he had left off. The students chanted the rest of the words in such a mumbled and apathetic manner that I chuckled to myself. I laugh every morning at this spectacle, and it is a highlight of my day.
I waited for my co-teacher, who came along a few minutes later. We walked to the class together after he arrived, and talked about some of the things that would happen in class that day. We waited for a few minutes outside the classroom until the students had cleaned the classroom, and then we went inside. The students rose from their seats, and remained standing until we told them that they could sit down. After taking a minute to unpack my notes and books, I went to the board and wrote out the agenda for the day. I then wrote the date on the board. “Today is Thursday December 25th, 2008.” I thought about telling the class that today was Christmas, but I decided not to.
The lesson proceeded smoothly. We did some reading, went over a few vocabulary words, stressed pronunciation, and drilled the past progressive. At around 8:50, we let the students out for a break. I went to the library and talked for a few minutes with the other teachers, who were asking me what Christmas was. They had seen something about it on the television or radio, and I explained that it was a religious holiday that was about as big a deal as Pchum Ben. They understood the analogy well enough. At around 9:05, I went over to the second class. The chapter that this class was discussing had to do with advertising, and I had brought some ads from American magazines to show them was an advertisement was.
My co-teacher and I started off the lesson in the regular manner that we always do, but around 10:00 something rather unusual happened. Two other teachers appeared in the doorway of the classroom and beckoned my co-teacher to go with them. Without hesitation, Mr. Nou turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, I am busy. Can you teach the class?” He did not give me a chance to answer, as he left with the other teachers a few seconds later. Standing in the middle of the class, I turned to the students and asked them to wait for a few moments. I went outside, and noticed that none of the other classrooms had teachers in them. The students were filing out of them, and were walking towards the shed where they park their bicycles. I went back inside the class, and proceeded to teach for the rest of the time remaining. I had the students look at the advertisements I brought in groups, and helped them figure out what their purpose was. When this was concluded, I packed up my things and dismissed the students.
As I walking out of the school, I noticed that all of the teachers were playing soccer. I learned later that the reason why all of the teachers had left their classes was because the school director had left early that day. With no boss around, they decided to abandon their classes in order to go play soccer. I sighed while I watched the teachers kick the ball around. “À la Cambodgien,” I said to myself.
I walked home in a few minutes, and upon entering my room I started boiling water for a cup of tea. I swept and cleaned my room for a little while until my host mother told me that it was time for lunch. The meal was fish soup with rice. With a spoon in my right hand and a fork in my left, I ate the meal in silence with the rest of the family. I poured a helpful of chili sauce on my bowl at one point so the dish could have some flavor. After lunch, the women cleared the dishes and I began reading a copy of the New Yorker that had been sent to my by mail. You, the reader, might think that my manners are poor for not helping the women in their tasks of cooking and cleaning, but I assure you that this is not the case. I have tried many times to help cook, clean the dishes, or some other part of the women’s housework in the kitchen, but my attempts were met with firm rebuttals. I have been shooed out of the kitchen more times than I would like to admit, and I have reluctantly accepted their custom of keeping men out of their designated chores.
After reading for a while, the father of the table came to the table with a large bowl of roasted crickets. The bugs, which are about as big as your little finger, have a taste that resembles popcorn. Altogether they are not all that bad, but I cannot eat them without thinking about what they are. I watched the father as he ate an entire bowl of the little monsters.
The rest of the day was mildly uneventful. I walked over the pagoda and chatted with the monks for a little while, stopped off in a little café to have a glass of iced coffee, and went for a bicycle ride through the countryside. The only hint that indicated that it was Christmas came from something I saw on the television later that evening. On one of the variety shows, there was a singing and dancing troupe that evoked the Christmas spirit as best as a Cambodian person can. Men, dressed in white suits and red vests, and women, in red and white corset-like outfits, were holding poms poms and dancing. They were also singing about something called “crissmah.”
That was how I spent Christmas this year. It is very hard to make a big deal about it when your in the middle of rural southeast Asia, and I’ve tried not to think about it. C’est la vie.
"No thanks, I don't want a Khmer wife."
Tough Questions
Khmer people, I have found, are naturally inquisitive. Many foreigners who live here are surprised by the amount of questions that are put to them on a daily basis. For volunteers living in rural situations, this custom can sometimes feel like a minor inquisition. The family I live with asks me every time I leave the house where I am going, and every time I come back where I have been. Children in the street ask me where I am going, and the women in the market ask me where I am coming from. It is easy to want to shrug these questions off after a long day to people who are close to you, but this is quite rude. Unbeknownst to me until recently, these questions have much more of a significance in rural areas recently afflicted by violence than it does in other parts of Cambodia. When someone asks you, “Where are you going?” it is a way of keeping track of your safety instead of being a nosy question. If a person knows where you are going, then they know where to look if something has happened to you. During the 1980’s and 90’s, it was a way of knowing where one could look for your body if the Khmer Rouge killed you. Family members still ask each other these questions because of that time. This was really hard for me to wrap my head around when I first learned about it. It still boggles my mind a little bit, but I’m gradually learning to accept as a part of behavioral changes I have to make if I am to live in this culture without incident.
These little inquiries also have to do with the way I look. With light brown hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, and clad in white skin, I blend in with the population as well as a dead fish does in a clear glass of water. The local people in the northern edge of the country have never seen foreigners before in their lives, and everyone I meet wants to know who I am and what I am doing here. Fortunately, I am quite prepared for these kinds of situations. I possess in my knowledge two rehearsed speeches in Khmer that I give more often than I would like to admit. The first has to do with who I am, what I am doing here, why I speak Khmer, and how long I am in this country for. Even if someone has a seen a foreigner on TV or interacts with them frequently, few have ever heard one speak their language with near fluency. Most of the ex-pats (we give them the name “sex-pats” because that is what a lot of them unfortunately come here for) cannot speak a word of the language, which makes me and the other Peace Corps volunteers in this country somewhat of a novelty. The second speech has to do with marriage.
The Debate on Marriage
Practically everyone I meet asks me if I am married. From students, teachers, host family members, and strangers I have casually met, it is asked as simply part of making introductions. Like many cultures around the world, marriage is an important part of life. There is a lot of social pressure to get married and to have kids. The reason why is somewhat of mystery to me, but I have a sort of working theory on it. In trying to see marriage from a Khmer perspective it, I have reason to believe that marriage is seen as being the only way of truly being happy. When a person asks you about your marital status, it seems that are inquiring about how happy you are. Think of it as sort of a distant cousin of “how are you?”
The response to this question is that I am not married, and I am not seeking to marry a Khmer girl. I suppose that I do not have explain myself as to why this is so, but I will write that I cannot foresee how on earth this would happen. There are some volunteers who have decided to be involved with Cambodians, and I am not trying to belittle them or their choices in any way. I imagine that it is a really hard relationship to forge in the two years that we are here, and I admire their efforts in trying to make that work. It is particularly tricky for the male volunteers. The staff told us in training that if we were involved with a Khmer girl, we would have to marry her. Any extrication yourself from a Khmer betrothal would be an inexorable offense in the eyes of the Peace Corps, as you would have completely ruined your community reputation. You would be administratively separated (fired) as a result.
While I am happy for the volunteers that have made such a serious commitment, there are a lot of us who would be prefer not to be involved. I personally feel that there would be such a huge cultural barrier, particularly with the threat of marriage looming over our heads, if I were to find myself in such a predicament. The whole thing would be a nightmarish misunderstanding of language, culture, and desire. I also do not see marriage as the ultimate goal of life and key to happiness, as Khmer people see it, and this is extremely hard to communicate. With all these reasons for not wanting to get married in Cambodia, how do I respond to the ineluctable question of whether I want a Khmer wife? The answer is that I have developed over time a series of responses to it that satisfy to some degree the interrogating party.
The first step in answering the question “are you married?” is to know the person that you are talking to. If it is someone who I have just met or do not know very well, I usually try and deflect this with a joke. “Mun toan riup kah té bruah kñom at mean loi té”, I say to them, which means, “I’m not married because I really don’t have any money.” Most people laugh at not being able to afford a wife, and it reduces the seriousness of the question a little. If the person is someone who I know, the answer is a little more difficult. Because marriage is so important, it is rather hard to convince someone here that being young, unmarried, and traveling the world is actually pretty fantastic. It is such a hard thing to explain that there are several steps that I take in the debate that usually prevent the conversation from forcing me to explain this point.
After I tell the first joke, what usually happens is that the person asks me if I want a Khmer wife. There are usually several things that I can say in response to this. I try not to offend Khmer pride by saying that while Khmer women are very beautiful, graceful, and lovely ad infinitum, I am seeking a wife who speaks English. I explain that if my wife does not speak English and I do not speak Khmer, then there will be a riap kah kree-am kram (unhappy marriage). The average response is to say that there are lots of Khmer girls who speak English, but I counter that by saying that their English is simply not good enough. A person clever enough to see through my initial response will say that in two years I will speak Khmer fluently enough to communicate with a Khmer wife; therefore, no knowledge of English is necessary.
Now it is time to bring out the big guns, and I move the discussion to culture. “Wah pah toh ah co kah nee ah” is a phrase that is thrown around a lot, which means “different culture.” I try and explain to them that marriage is much different in America than in Cambodia. In this country, you go on a date with someone three or four times before you marry them. The families are involved in every step of the way, and the process is almost quicker than a shotgun wedding. It leaves no time for hesitation or doubt, and you barely know the person you marry. There are also a lot of other things about Cambodian marriages that I both do not understand and find very bizarre and sinister, but I will not mention these. I try and explain in a five-minute lecture about how in America your wife is your best friend, that there is more equality between the sexes, and at least a dozen other reasons why marriage is so different in my home country. The goal is to lead them through a convoluted and elaborate dance of an explanation that raises many points and offers an equal number of examples. By the end of it, the person listening to me understands that I do not want a Khmer wife. They may not understand the reasons why, but they know I have many of which they do not understand.
This usually does the trick, and afterwards the conversation is free to move onto other subjects.
Khmer people, I have found, are naturally inquisitive. Many foreigners who live here are surprised by the amount of questions that are put to them on a daily basis. For volunteers living in rural situations, this custom can sometimes feel like a minor inquisition. The family I live with asks me every time I leave the house where I am going, and every time I come back where I have been. Children in the street ask me where I am going, and the women in the market ask me where I am coming from. It is easy to want to shrug these questions off after a long day to people who are close to you, but this is quite rude. Unbeknownst to me until recently, these questions have much more of a significance in rural areas recently afflicted by violence than it does in other parts of Cambodia. When someone asks you, “Where are you going?” it is a way of keeping track of your safety instead of being a nosy question. If a person knows where you are going, then they know where to look if something has happened to you. During the 1980’s and 90’s, it was a way of knowing where one could look for your body if the Khmer Rouge killed you. Family members still ask each other these questions because of that time. This was really hard for me to wrap my head around when I first learned about it. It still boggles my mind a little bit, but I’m gradually learning to accept as a part of behavioral changes I have to make if I am to live in this culture without incident.
These little inquiries also have to do with the way I look. With light brown hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, and clad in white skin, I blend in with the population as well as a dead fish does in a clear glass of water. The local people in the northern edge of the country have never seen foreigners before in their lives, and everyone I meet wants to know who I am and what I am doing here. Fortunately, I am quite prepared for these kinds of situations. I possess in my knowledge two rehearsed speeches in Khmer that I give more often than I would like to admit. The first has to do with who I am, what I am doing here, why I speak Khmer, and how long I am in this country for. Even if someone has a seen a foreigner on TV or interacts with them frequently, few have ever heard one speak their language with near fluency. Most of the ex-pats (we give them the name “sex-pats” because that is what a lot of them unfortunately come here for) cannot speak a word of the language, which makes me and the other Peace Corps volunteers in this country somewhat of a novelty. The second speech has to do with marriage.
The Debate on Marriage
Practically everyone I meet asks me if I am married. From students, teachers, host family members, and strangers I have casually met, it is asked as simply part of making introductions. Like many cultures around the world, marriage is an important part of life. There is a lot of social pressure to get married and to have kids. The reason why is somewhat of mystery to me, but I have a sort of working theory on it. In trying to see marriage from a Khmer perspective it, I have reason to believe that marriage is seen as being the only way of truly being happy. When a person asks you about your marital status, it seems that are inquiring about how happy you are. Think of it as sort of a distant cousin of “how are you?”
The response to this question is that I am not married, and I am not seeking to marry a Khmer girl. I suppose that I do not have explain myself as to why this is so, but I will write that I cannot foresee how on earth this would happen. There are some volunteers who have decided to be involved with Cambodians, and I am not trying to belittle them or their choices in any way. I imagine that it is a really hard relationship to forge in the two years that we are here, and I admire their efforts in trying to make that work. It is particularly tricky for the male volunteers. The staff told us in training that if we were involved with a Khmer girl, we would have to marry her. Any extrication yourself from a Khmer betrothal would be an inexorable offense in the eyes of the Peace Corps, as you would have completely ruined your community reputation. You would be administratively separated (fired) as a result.
While I am happy for the volunteers that have made such a serious commitment, there are a lot of us who would be prefer not to be involved. I personally feel that there would be such a huge cultural barrier, particularly with the threat of marriage looming over our heads, if I were to find myself in such a predicament. The whole thing would be a nightmarish misunderstanding of language, culture, and desire. I also do not see marriage as the ultimate goal of life and key to happiness, as Khmer people see it, and this is extremely hard to communicate. With all these reasons for not wanting to get married in Cambodia, how do I respond to the ineluctable question of whether I want a Khmer wife? The answer is that I have developed over time a series of responses to it that satisfy to some degree the interrogating party.
The first step in answering the question “are you married?” is to know the person that you are talking to. If it is someone who I have just met or do not know very well, I usually try and deflect this with a joke. “Mun toan riup kah té bruah kñom at mean loi té”, I say to them, which means, “I’m not married because I really don’t have any money.” Most people laugh at not being able to afford a wife, and it reduces the seriousness of the question a little. If the person is someone who I know, the answer is a little more difficult. Because marriage is so important, it is rather hard to convince someone here that being young, unmarried, and traveling the world is actually pretty fantastic. It is such a hard thing to explain that there are several steps that I take in the debate that usually prevent the conversation from forcing me to explain this point.
After I tell the first joke, what usually happens is that the person asks me if I want a Khmer wife. There are usually several things that I can say in response to this. I try not to offend Khmer pride by saying that while Khmer women are very beautiful, graceful, and lovely ad infinitum, I am seeking a wife who speaks English. I explain that if my wife does not speak English and I do not speak Khmer, then there will be a riap kah kree-am kram (unhappy marriage). The average response is to say that there are lots of Khmer girls who speak English, but I counter that by saying that their English is simply not good enough. A person clever enough to see through my initial response will say that in two years I will speak Khmer fluently enough to communicate with a Khmer wife; therefore, no knowledge of English is necessary.
Now it is time to bring out the big guns, and I move the discussion to culture. “Wah pah toh ah co kah nee ah” is a phrase that is thrown around a lot, which means “different culture.” I try and explain to them that marriage is much different in America than in Cambodia. In this country, you go on a date with someone three or four times before you marry them. The families are involved in every step of the way, and the process is almost quicker than a shotgun wedding. It leaves no time for hesitation or doubt, and you barely know the person you marry. There are also a lot of other things about Cambodian marriages that I both do not understand and find very bizarre and sinister, but I will not mention these. I try and explain in a five-minute lecture about how in America your wife is your best friend, that there is more equality between the sexes, and at least a dozen other reasons why marriage is so different in my home country. The goal is to lead them through a convoluted and elaborate dance of an explanation that raises many points and offers an equal number of examples. By the end of it, the person listening to me understands that I do not want a Khmer wife. They may not understand the reasons why, but they know I have many of which they do not understand.
This usually does the trick, and afterwards the conversation is free to move onto other subjects.
The Assignment So Far Part Two
When I first came to the Anchor district, I was filled with a kind of callow enthusiasm. Having just finished training in Kampong, my head was full of plans about what I could do as an American volunteer in this northern outpost. I arrived at my site ready to take on whatever challenge was in front of me, but I probably would not have been so enthusiastic had I known what I would face. There are countless pieces of vital information that I wish I had known when I arrived. Beginning with the history of the district, I was oblivious in knowing that this community was almost at the end of their first decade of peace in nearly thirty years. I was to discover only later that this current era is the first in a long time in which students do not have to run for shelter when mortar rounds fall on their schools. It is also the first time that the district can offer any kind of higher education than secondary school. It is in this place that a young American volunteer came to teach English, and found himself bewildered by what he saw.
Two months have passed since the day I came here. During this time, I have struggled every day to deal with at least some part of my situation. From teaching, secondary projects, Khmer skills, cultural barriers, the living situation, ants, frightening tropical illnesses, to the very social fabric of the town itself, there are some days when I come home feeling just wiped out from even trying to make any sort of life here. Yet despite all of these hardships, I do believe that this is all completely and utterly worth doing. If it was not, I do not think that I would be here.
Teaching is the reason why I was sent here in the first place, and I think that this is probably the best thing that I can do for the district as a volunteer. It has taken me a long while to figure out what are effective teaching methods, but right now it seems that I seem to be making some headway. Most volunteers come into this country into schools that have students that can read, write, and speak English well by tenth or eleventh grade. As I mentioned in my first report on the assignment here, this is not the case in my district. The student’s abilities in this rural district are really far behind those in more urban areas of Cambodia, and it does not help that their textbooks, the heinous English For Cambodia, is not what they need to be studying.
The problem with the book is that it is designed for students in an urban environment like Phnom Penh or Siem Reap. The subject matter is accessible to students who have fairly easy access to a variety of resources such as dictionaries, the Internet, English books, and foreigners. However, using it to teach the sons and daughters of farmers who lack these resources is an almost futile process. There are entire chapters devoted to learning about airplane travel, the history of London, or Ted’s Favourite Island (with the British spelling). They are bombarded with useless vocabulary such as boarding pass, Hyde Park, and Corsica (Ted’s Favourite Island). I realize that I have not been an English teacher for very long, but it seems to me that a person who cannot answer the question, “What are you doing today?” probably has a bigger problems than not knowing where Corsica is. Combine this with very little grammar and speaking practice, and you have a typical student in Anchor High School.
A favorite teaching episode of mine comes from when Mr. Nou and I were conducting a free writing exercise. There was one question on the board, which read, “Who are you?” The students were given instructions to answer the question in English with responses such as, “My name is Chay Lonn. I live in Daun Sva village, and I have two older sisters,” but they were free to use any vocabulary they wanted. Most of the students were able to do it, and it seemed simple enough. One young man wrote down in his notebook. “My name is (name omitted). I am a minister. I have two younger brothers.” The student had no idea what a minister was. It was just a vocabulary word that meant nothing to him, but he decided he would put down anyway just to have something to put down.
So how do I get around this problem? I have come up with two methods that seem relatively effective. The first thing to do is to not teach using English for Cambodia. I cannot do away with the book completely, due to the POE’s (Provincial Office of Education) regulations, but there are ways in which you can work around it. The classes are divided into two-hour sessions, I have come up with an agreement with my co-teacher to do something different with the first hour of the class. Currently, I am alternating between teaching quick grammar lessons and English comprehension games during this first hour. By doing this, I seem to be making some headway in the student’s English abiltities. It is slow going because the students do not know really how to put English words together correctly, but I see a little bit of improvement so far. It is also useful because I can use the group assignments I give them to go around the classroom and give them individual help.
The second method involves taking that god-awful book English For Cambodia, and coming up with a lesson that makes the material in it remotely accessible. The book is divided into chapters, with three units to a chapter. One unit is supposed to take up the space of an entire lesson, but the section is usually so hard by itself that this does not happen. What I typically end up doing is playing around the comprehension questions at the end of a reading section to make them more understandable, making up some better questions at the end of the lesson that have to do with the vocabulary, or using a particular chapter to teach about something out of the book. For example, some exercises that are too hard by themselves can be used for teaching a grammar lesson. It can be a lot of work, but if you do not do it the class can be very boring and uninteresting for both the teachers and students.
My counterpart, Mr. Nou, does not know how to teach without the book, but he is gradually picking up on some of the techniques I use in the class. I am trying to get him to speak more in English in the class, but he speaks more in Khmer because the students do not understand English very much. There are a lot of moments when the students do not understand the instructions I give them, and he has to explain to them in Khmer what they should be doing. Some of the games and exercises I have introduced seem to be very popular with the students, such as a competitive form of “Telephone,” and I am hoping that Mr. Nou will take some of these games and use them for his classes in the future.
Every once and a while, there a few light hearted moments that help me get through the day. The other day, I was going some vocabulary that Mr. Nou had pulled out from the book in an 11th grade class. I was explaining what an airplane was, and in an effort to explain it I drew a picture of one on the chalkboard. I drew a box, put some wings and propellers on it, and called it an airplane. I am admittedly not the best artist, but for some in the class it looked like something else. One of the boys at the back of the class called out, “Is that a condom?” It was so ridiculous that I could not help but laugh.
I am not worried so much about making an impact in this community because I can already see that happening. I know of one story, which I only learned about recently, where this clearly was the case. During the rainy season, our school was flooded with water from the adjacent and overflowing rice fields. The buildings remained dry, but the students and teachers were forced to walk through wide stretches of water and mud in order to get to class. The first time that the water was very high, many of the teachers did not want to work. The school director was hearing their complaints one morning, when he noticed that I had simply rolled up my pants, took off my socks and shoes, and was wading through the warm and sticky mud to get to class. He then said to the rest of the teachers, “Listen, if that American is going to go teach, then you should go and teach.” This shamed the teachers into going to school, and class was held that day much to every one’s immediate delight or disappointment, depending on how you look at it. Teachers taught, students listened, and life continued on as normal.
Life Outside The Classroom
Other than teaching, there is really not much to do right now. I read a lot, practice the violin, bicycle around the district, and walk through the country. I have a few ideas for secondary projects, but they involve knowing a great deal more of Khmer than I do already. I have a Khmer teacher that I am currently seeing three times a week, and I am hoping that after some time I will be able to do things like start a hygiene and first aid class at the health NGO in the village. Cambodia is a particularly dirty county, and promoting basic cleanliness would probably be a good and feasible project.
I am getting to know the staff at an agricultural NGO in my town named ADRA. I have the idea of possibly working with them to possibly start a garden or some other kind of agricultural project at the school. Most of the kids are probably never going to leave the district, and it would be valuable for them to learn about the different ways they can grow food on their own. The culture here is, arguable, very materialistic. Any attempt to draw their attention away from cell phones, TV’s, computers, or motorcycles and focus it on how they are going to need to feed themselves and their country in the next ten years is probably a good one.
Life continues on here…
Two months have passed since the day I came here. During this time, I have struggled every day to deal with at least some part of my situation. From teaching, secondary projects, Khmer skills, cultural barriers, the living situation, ants, frightening tropical illnesses, to the very social fabric of the town itself, there are some days when I come home feeling just wiped out from even trying to make any sort of life here. Yet despite all of these hardships, I do believe that this is all completely and utterly worth doing. If it was not, I do not think that I would be here.
Teaching is the reason why I was sent here in the first place, and I think that this is probably the best thing that I can do for the district as a volunteer. It has taken me a long while to figure out what are effective teaching methods, but right now it seems that I seem to be making some headway. Most volunteers come into this country into schools that have students that can read, write, and speak English well by tenth or eleventh grade. As I mentioned in my first report on the assignment here, this is not the case in my district. The student’s abilities in this rural district are really far behind those in more urban areas of Cambodia, and it does not help that their textbooks, the heinous English For Cambodia, is not what they need to be studying.
The problem with the book is that it is designed for students in an urban environment like Phnom Penh or Siem Reap. The subject matter is accessible to students who have fairly easy access to a variety of resources such as dictionaries, the Internet, English books, and foreigners. However, using it to teach the sons and daughters of farmers who lack these resources is an almost futile process. There are entire chapters devoted to learning about airplane travel, the history of London, or Ted’s Favourite Island (with the British spelling). They are bombarded with useless vocabulary such as boarding pass, Hyde Park, and Corsica (Ted’s Favourite Island). I realize that I have not been an English teacher for very long, but it seems to me that a person who cannot answer the question, “What are you doing today?” probably has a bigger problems than not knowing where Corsica is. Combine this with very little grammar and speaking practice, and you have a typical student in Anchor High School.
A favorite teaching episode of mine comes from when Mr. Nou and I were conducting a free writing exercise. There was one question on the board, which read, “Who are you?” The students were given instructions to answer the question in English with responses such as, “My name is Chay Lonn. I live in Daun Sva village, and I have two older sisters,” but they were free to use any vocabulary they wanted. Most of the students were able to do it, and it seemed simple enough. One young man wrote down in his notebook. “My name is (name omitted). I am a minister. I have two younger brothers.” The student had no idea what a minister was. It was just a vocabulary word that meant nothing to him, but he decided he would put down anyway just to have something to put down.
So how do I get around this problem? I have come up with two methods that seem relatively effective. The first thing to do is to not teach using English for Cambodia. I cannot do away with the book completely, due to the POE’s (Provincial Office of Education) regulations, but there are ways in which you can work around it. The classes are divided into two-hour sessions, I have come up with an agreement with my co-teacher to do something different with the first hour of the class. Currently, I am alternating between teaching quick grammar lessons and English comprehension games during this first hour. By doing this, I seem to be making some headway in the student’s English abiltities. It is slow going because the students do not know really how to put English words together correctly, but I see a little bit of improvement so far. It is also useful because I can use the group assignments I give them to go around the classroom and give them individual help.
The second method involves taking that god-awful book English For Cambodia, and coming up with a lesson that makes the material in it remotely accessible. The book is divided into chapters, with three units to a chapter. One unit is supposed to take up the space of an entire lesson, but the section is usually so hard by itself that this does not happen. What I typically end up doing is playing around the comprehension questions at the end of a reading section to make them more understandable, making up some better questions at the end of the lesson that have to do with the vocabulary, or using a particular chapter to teach about something out of the book. For example, some exercises that are too hard by themselves can be used for teaching a grammar lesson. It can be a lot of work, but if you do not do it the class can be very boring and uninteresting for both the teachers and students.
My counterpart, Mr. Nou, does not know how to teach without the book, but he is gradually picking up on some of the techniques I use in the class. I am trying to get him to speak more in English in the class, but he speaks more in Khmer because the students do not understand English very much. There are a lot of moments when the students do not understand the instructions I give them, and he has to explain to them in Khmer what they should be doing. Some of the games and exercises I have introduced seem to be very popular with the students, such as a competitive form of “Telephone,” and I am hoping that Mr. Nou will take some of these games and use them for his classes in the future.
Every once and a while, there a few light hearted moments that help me get through the day. The other day, I was going some vocabulary that Mr. Nou had pulled out from the book in an 11th grade class. I was explaining what an airplane was, and in an effort to explain it I drew a picture of one on the chalkboard. I drew a box, put some wings and propellers on it, and called it an airplane. I am admittedly not the best artist, but for some in the class it looked like something else. One of the boys at the back of the class called out, “Is that a condom?” It was so ridiculous that I could not help but laugh.
I am not worried so much about making an impact in this community because I can already see that happening. I know of one story, which I only learned about recently, where this clearly was the case. During the rainy season, our school was flooded with water from the adjacent and overflowing rice fields. The buildings remained dry, but the students and teachers were forced to walk through wide stretches of water and mud in order to get to class. The first time that the water was very high, many of the teachers did not want to work. The school director was hearing their complaints one morning, when he noticed that I had simply rolled up my pants, took off my socks and shoes, and was wading through the warm and sticky mud to get to class. He then said to the rest of the teachers, “Listen, if that American is going to go teach, then you should go and teach.” This shamed the teachers into going to school, and class was held that day much to every one’s immediate delight or disappointment, depending on how you look at it. Teachers taught, students listened, and life continued on as normal.
Life Outside The Classroom
Other than teaching, there is really not much to do right now. I read a lot, practice the violin, bicycle around the district, and walk through the country. I have a few ideas for secondary projects, but they involve knowing a great deal more of Khmer than I do already. I have a Khmer teacher that I am currently seeing three times a week, and I am hoping that after some time I will be able to do things like start a hygiene and first aid class at the health NGO in the village. Cambodia is a particularly dirty county, and promoting basic cleanliness would probably be a good and feasible project.
I am getting to know the staff at an agricultural NGO in my town named ADRA. I have the idea of possibly working with them to possibly start a garden or some other kind of agricultural project at the school. Most of the kids are probably never going to leave the district, and it would be valuable for them to learn about the different ways they can grow food on their own. The culture here is, arguable, very materialistic. Any attempt to draw their attention away from cell phones, TV’s, computers, or motorcycles and focus it on how they are going to need to feed themselves and their country in the next ten years is probably a good one.
Life continues on here…
The Desire To be Understood
The old woman selling hardware did
Not have a clue about
What I wanted to
Buy. Yes, I was
Desperate. The word
I wanted did not come when I
Needed it most. “Uhh,”
And frantic pantomime and gesture
I did my best. She looked at me like I was a crazy
Man, Lunatic as I may be I still had to have
What she was selling. A
Thought occurs. Drawing at outline in the dirt
Between us with a stick. After she finally knew what it was,
I sighed and she breathed. Money left my hands and entered
Hers. “Relief” in the eye of the beholder.
How human the two of us
Are.
Not have a clue about
What I wanted to
Buy. Yes, I was
Desperate. The word
I wanted did not come when I
Needed it most. “Uhh,”
And frantic pantomime and gesture
I did my best. She looked at me like I was a crazy
Man, Lunatic as I may be I still had to have
What she was selling. A
Thought occurs. Drawing at outline in the dirt
Between us with a stick. After she finally knew what it was,
I sighed and she breathed. Money left my hands and entered
Hers. “Relief” in the eye of the beholder.
How human the two of us
Are.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Conversations With Monks
Before reading this post, I would ask the viewer of this public diary to do one simple task; expunge from your mind all knowledge of what a monk is or should be. Do not imagine the kind, sagacious, and ascetic man whose life is given for that of a heavenly purpose. Forget everything you know about St. Francis or his order, and let me describe to you what I have seen of their Buddhist cousins in this country.
Monks in this country are ubiquitous. You can see them riding on the back of a motorcycle with their saffron robes wrapped around their heads, or walking through a village as they beg for rice. Their heads are generally shaved, their robes drape over one shoulder, and more than a few of them sport tattoos on their body. Many of the monks who live at the Wat were troublemaking boys at one point in their lives who were sent to the pagoda as a kind of reform school. Many boys decide to stay following their period of reform and become monks. It is a way out of being a rice farmer for the rest of your life, and it is an honorable profession. Excluding the religious ceremonies and festivals that they preside over, they are the caretakers of the temple grounds. They perform maintenance on the buildings, tend to the gardens, and work on the other kinds of arts and crafts that go on there.
On late afternoon strolls through the village, I usually visit the chief monk of the Wat near my home. He stands at about 5’5,’’ has several metal teeth, and carries several cell phones around in a yellow pouch around his waist. His back is covered in burn marks from traditional Cambodian medicine, and he smokes expensive Alain Delon cigarettes. The first time that I met him, I was visiting the Wat for the first time. I arrived with another teacher from the high school, and the two of us went into his office inside a wooden gazebo-like building. We kneeled before him, and touched our heads to the floor three times before sitting down in chairs. From behind his desk, the chief monk smiled at us, smoked a cigarette, and gave me a welcoming speech. While he was speaking, a fish in one of the green water tanks behind him was gnawing viciously at a dead frog. I tried my best not to take it as a bad omen.
On my subsequent trips to the Wat, I have discovered that the chief monk maintains a collection of animals there that include four peacocks, three turkeys, two reptiles of some kind, a very large spotted snake, and an abundance of birds. He even has an enormous bird house, which I have a picture of here.
The man on the left in this photograph, the chief monk, is a jovial character, and some of the conversations we have had are pretty amusing. This is summary of what we talk about in perfectly fluent Khmer.
“Do you have a girlfriend in Cambodia?” he asks me.
“No, do you?”
He laughs. “Are you looking for one in Anchor?”
“Not really. I rather prefer American girls.”
“Really? Cambodian girls are not pretty for you?”
“They are pretty, but American girls can speak English.”
“Some Cambodian girls can speak English.”
“Not in Anchor.” We both laugh.
We talk about the weather, how much he wants to learn English but cannot seem to find the time, and what the students are like in Anchor. We also trade opinions about each other’s digital camera. My Khmer is not good enough to have any more in depth conversations than this with the guy, but I’m hoping it will improve with time.
Thanks to this man, the idea of what a Buddhist monk is or should be has been completely shattered in my head. If the same has not been done to you, then I have a done a poor job in describing this man to you.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
This is Lunch
This is a pretty typical lunch for me. Starting clockwise from the fish, which are eaten with the head, are some fish paste, some spicy fish paste, vegetables with a little bit of pork, and some white noodles. Accompanying this is a cornucopia of rice. It might not look so bad, but I swear some days I eat the food more out of hunger than out of taste.
This Is My Brain On Dengue Fever
Being sick is a miserable experience no matter where you are. Being sick in Cambodia is no different, but some comfort can be found in that the Peace Corps staff here is trained and ready to deal with whatever illness you might have. Medical emergencies are taken very seriously because the kinds of medical threats that we face here on a daily basis are quite serious. I have seen this attention first hand recently, I have recently come down with a case of dengue fever.
The virus that causes this condition is transmitted through mosquito bites, which are unfortunately impossible to avoid. Even though I have gone through a great many precautions to protect myself from the little vampires, there are simply too many of them around to really be one hundred percent safe from their bite. You can hide in your nets and wear as much bug spray as you want, but the mosquitoes will simply bite you when you are toweling off after a shower, or walking to the bathroom in the morning. However, what I have seems to be a mild strain of the virus, which is the reason why I can type this entry. However, the story of what happened to me this week is probably worth putting down in words.
This past weekend I was in Kampong Cham for an in-service language training session with some of the Peace Corps staff from Phnom Penh. On Saturday afternoon, a sudden rash started appearing on my face and neck, which began to spread elsewhere on my body. It was sort of blotchy, which was lightly red and smooth to the touch. It did not itch, but it definitely looked strange. Alarmed by this, I called our Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO). I described my symptoms over the phone to her, and she told me that it was probably an allergic reaction. I took some Benadryl, but the rash did not go away. Later that evening, I began feeling tired and feverish. When I woke up the next morning, the rash had spread to the rest of my body, a hundred degree fever was racking my body, and a splitting headache was pounding nails into the front of my head. I called the PCMO, and she told me to get to Phnom Penh as soon as possible. Since some of the Peace Corps staff was already in Kampong Cham, I hopped into their van on Sunday morning and got a ride into Phnom Penh. Both, the driver of the van, said to me during the ride, "You know when Cambodian people get like that, they just take a cold shower and they're fine. But you Americans, I don't know..."
I persuaded the staff driving the van to bring me to Royal Ratanak Hospital, where I met the PCMO. I waited in the waiting room of the hospital for a few minutes before the PCMO and I met with a US trained Cambodian doctor. Before the meeting, several people moved away me when I sat down. Apparently, I looked that bad. Both the PCMO and the Cambodian doctor examined me, took my blood and urine, and put me into a very comfortable hospital room.
The room where I spent the following two days was the nicest hospital room that I have ever been in. Imagine a room in a very nice luxury hotel, and then put a hospital bed in there. Not only did I have a wide-screen TV, but also a couch, a chair, wooden closet, a microwave, a refrigerator, air conditioning, and my own bathroom. A fresh white towel and a pair of clean scrubs were provided to me every afternoon. The food in the hospital was not very good, but I suppose that that is to be expected of hospitals anywhere in the world. Since Royal Ratanak Hospital is owned by a big hospital complex in Thailand, most of the nurses who I interacted with were Thai instead of Khmer. I tried asking them about the political situation in Thailand right now, but the most I got in response was a laugh and shaking of the head.
Over the last few days, the virus has run its course. The fever dissipated after a day, and the rash seems to have faded by now. The headaches are still there off and on, but they have mostly gone away. What is peculiar about my condition is that what I have seems to be a very “atypical” case of dengue. This is fine by me because I enjoy being anything but typical. This is also good because other cases of dengue can be much worse than what I have. Other people who have had this have told me that the symptoms usually begin a high fever that lasts for several days before getting the rash. The fever that I had did not last for very long, but I did have the headaches that usually accompany the onset of the infection.
Right now I am sitting in the volunteer resource room of the Peace Corps office in Phnom Penh. The PCMO wants to watch me over the next few days to make sure that my condition does not worsen, but since my energy is up I do not think that it will. If it did worsen, then they would have to move me to a larger and more sophisticated medical center where I would undergo blood transfusions. Dengue fever does something to lower both the platelet and white blood cell count in your body, and the only treatment in this case is to have daily blood transfusions. The nearest place where I could have this done is in Bangkok, but since political demonstration in Thailand has closed the main airport they would have to move me to Singapore. I personally would not mind going to Singapore, but perhaps under different circumstances. Also, getting blood transfusions in any third world country is among my worst nightmares.
I really hope it does not come to that, and that I get well soon. I would be upset at my present situation, but getting diseases like this is a risk you take when you sign up for this job. Consider it an unintended consequence of a tropical lifestyle.
The virus that causes this condition is transmitted through mosquito bites, which are unfortunately impossible to avoid. Even though I have gone through a great many precautions to protect myself from the little vampires, there are simply too many of them around to really be one hundred percent safe from their bite. You can hide in your nets and wear as much bug spray as you want, but the mosquitoes will simply bite you when you are toweling off after a shower, or walking to the bathroom in the morning. However, what I have seems to be a mild strain of the virus, which is the reason why I can type this entry. However, the story of what happened to me this week is probably worth putting down in words.
This past weekend I was in Kampong Cham for an in-service language training session with some of the Peace Corps staff from Phnom Penh. On Saturday afternoon, a sudden rash started appearing on my face and neck, which began to spread elsewhere on my body. It was sort of blotchy, which was lightly red and smooth to the touch. It did not itch, but it definitely looked strange. Alarmed by this, I called our Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO). I described my symptoms over the phone to her, and she told me that it was probably an allergic reaction. I took some Benadryl, but the rash did not go away. Later that evening, I began feeling tired and feverish. When I woke up the next morning, the rash had spread to the rest of my body, a hundred degree fever was racking my body, and a splitting headache was pounding nails into the front of my head. I called the PCMO, and she told me to get to Phnom Penh as soon as possible. Since some of the Peace Corps staff was already in Kampong Cham, I hopped into their van on Sunday morning and got a ride into Phnom Penh. Both, the driver of the van, said to me during the ride, "You know when Cambodian people get like that, they just take a cold shower and they're fine. But you Americans, I don't know..."
I persuaded the staff driving the van to bring me to Royal Ratanak Hospital, where I met the PCMO. I waited in the waiting room of the hospital for a few minutes before the PCMO and I met with a US trained Cambodian doctor. Before the meeting, several people moved away me when I sat down. Apparently, I looked that bad. Both the PCMO and the Cambodian doctor examined me, took my blood and urine, and put me into a very comfortable hospital room.
The room where I spent the following two days was the nicest hospital room that I have ever been in. Imagine a room in a very nice luxury hotel, and then put a hospital bed in there. Not only did I have a wide-screen TV, but also a couch, a chair, wooden closet, a microwave, a refrigerator, air conditioning, and my own bathroom. A fresh white towel and a pair of clean scrubs were provided to me every afternoon. The food in the hospital was not very good, but I suppose that that is to be expected of hospitals anywhere in the world. Since Royal Ratanak Hospital is owned by a big hospital complex in Thailand, most of the nurses who I interacted with were Thai instead of Khmer. I tried asking them about the political situation in Thailand right now, but the most I got in response was a laugh and shaking of the head.
Over the last few days, the virus has run its course. The fever dissipated after a day, and the rash seems to have faded by now. The headaches are still there off and on, but they have mostly gone away. What is peculiar about my condition is that what I have seems to be a very “atypical” case of dengue. This is fine by me because I enjoy being anything but typical. This is also good because other cases of dengue can be much worse than what I have. Other people who have had this have told me that the symptoms usually begin a high fever that lasts for several days before getting the rash. The fever that I had did not last for very long, but I did have the headaches that usually accompany the onset of the infection.
Right now I am sitting in the volunteer resource room of the Peace Corps office in Phnom Penh. The PCMO wants to watch me over the next few days to make sure that my condition does not worsen, but since my energy is up I do not think that it will. If it did worsen, then they would have to move me to a larger and more sophisticated medical center where I would undergo blood transfusions. Dengue fever does something to lower both the platelet and white blood cell count in your body, and the only treatment in this case is to have daily blood transfusions. The nearest place where I could have this done is in Bangkok, but since political demonstration in Thailand has closed the main airport they would have to move me to Singapore. I personally would not mind going to Singapore, but perhaps under different circumstances. Also, getting blood transfusions in any third world country is among my worst nightmares.
I really hope it does not come to that, and that I get well soon. I would be upset at my present situation, but getting diseases like this is a risk you take when you sign up for this job. Consider it an unintended consequence of a tropical lifestyle.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
A Birthday in Cambodia
I've been trying to post this for a while, since September actually. This is what happens when you go to an ice cream shop and request a sort of birthday ice cream treat.
The Gecko
Have you ever seen a gecko hunt? It is quite beautiful to watch. One evening as I sat at my desk, I looked up from my work on a lesson plan to see a green striped gecko crawl towards the light of my lamp. Two or three of them are always crawling on the walls of my room somewhere, and my guess is that this particular one noticed the plethora of moths on the other side of the mosquito net. My guest came towards the light, and noticing my presence raised its head to look at me more closely. The black eyes on top of its head reflected the light of the lamp, and it stayed in this position for a few seconds. I remained motionless, hoping to give my reptile friend permission to hunt in my domain. The gecko bowed its head in gratitude, and continued with its search for an evening meal.
After spotting an attainable quarry, the gecko steadied himself. With one quick reflex, it lunged, flew diagonally down the wall, opened its mouth, and swallowed a nearby moth. The tail and feet worked quickly to reattach the flat belly to the wall, and soon the creature was adroitly righted. A pink lizard tongue slithered out of the mouth, and licked up and over the teeth. Wasting no time, the gecko turned itself around and continued the hunt. With the same movements, it swallowed two more moths and a mosquito. The prey in this region soon got wise to the gecko’s actions, and moved away to other regions of the room beyond the green mosquito net.
The gecko moved away as well, and it crawled away into the darkness. From some corner of the room, it began its call; a sort of “Ack Ack Ack Ack!” clicking sound. I interpreted it as a form of thanks for the evening meal.
With all the bugs around, it is good to have a gecko nearby. It was also Thanksgiving day, and I am glad that at least one of us had a feast.
After spotting an attainable quarry, the gecko steadied himself. With one quick reflex, it lunged, flew diagonally down the wall, opened its mouth, and swallowed a nearby moth. The tail and feet worked quickly to reattach the flat belly to the wall, and soon the creature was adroitly righted. A pink lizard tongue slithered out of the mouth, and licked up and over the teeth. Wasting no time, the gecko turned itself around and continued the hunt. With the same movements, it swallowed two more moths and a mosquito. The prey in this region soon got wise to the gecko’s actions, and moved away to other regions of the room beyond the green mosquito net.
The gecko moved away as well, and it crawled away into the darkness. From some corner of the room, it began its call; a sort of “Ack Ack Ack Ack!” clicking sound. I interpreted it as a form of thanks for the evening meal.
With all the bugs around, it is good to have a gecko nearby. It was also Thanksgiving day, and I am glad that at least one of us had a feast.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Autobiography As A Haiku
When the dry season begins in Cambodia, the weather changes overnight. A cool wind sweeps down from the Himalayas and blows away the monsoons. The farmers notice the change, and they prepare to harvest the fields of rice plants that have turned golden. Columns of workers armed with hoes, curved sickles, and straw baskets begin to appear on the side of the roads. A code of dress for this work is required: rubber sandals, long pants dirtied by mud, long sleeve shirts, straw hats, and cloth tied around their heads to protect themselves from the sun.
Reaching their destination, they wade across an irrigation canal in water up to their waist. As soon as they get to the other side, they begin to work. Standing in ankle deep mud, they bend over the tall thin plants and began to cut them down. Using one hand to hold them in place, they cut the plant down to its stump. When they have cut enough, they hand their bundles to another person who ties them together. They are then placed in a straw basket to be collected later.
The process repeats. Bend over. Swish! Give the bundles to the collector. Every few hours, a wooden cart with two great big wheels and driven by two oxen comes along and collects the bundles. By a concatenation of events after this, the end result is found in my morning breakfast bowl.
I ask my students if they want to be rice farmers. They tell me no, for it is very hard. I ask them if they want to be anything else when they leave school. They tell me yes.
“Well,” I say, “Better practice your English then.”
Reaching their destination, they wade across an irrigation canal in water up to their waist. As soon as they get to the other side, they begin to work. Standing in ankle deep mud, they bend over the tall thin plants and began to cut them down. Using one hand to hold them in place, they cut the plant down to its stump. When they have cut enough, they hand their bundles to another person who ties them together. They are then placed in a straw basket to be collected later.
The process repeats. Bend over. Swish! Give the bundles to the collector. Every few hours, a wooden cart with two great big wheels and driven by two oxen comes along and collects the bundles. By a concatenation of events after this, the end result is found in my morning breakfast bowl.
I ask my students if they want to be rice farmers. They tell me no, for it is very hard. I ask them if they want to be anything else when they leave school. They tell me yes.
“Well,” I say, “Better practice your English then.”
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The New Music Group
On Sunday, I journeyed to the town of Pourk to meet a group of musicians that my co-teacher knows. Since he mentioned the existence of the group, I had been dying to meet them and possibly to play with them. As luck would have it, the group really likes the Khmer music that I can produce on the violin. They want me to come back on Sunday, and I hope that this can become a part of my normal week’s schedule.
The group consisted of several instruments, with the addition of myself on the violin. The name of this kind of ensemble in Khmer is a vung phleng kar, which usually can be found at weddings. All of the musicians played chordophones, which means that they had strings, and they played with a good amount of skill. There was a kimm (a small hammered zither), a krapeu (three stringed zither), a tror chhe (spike fiddle tuned to G-D), and a tror so tauch (D-A), and one or two drums.
I was curious to see how the group would receive the western violin, but the fact is that the instrument is so similar to its eastern cousin, the spiked fiddle, that the members of the group warmed to its sound. My salvation in gaining acceptance was in the fact that I had a copy of a book containing many Cambodian children’s songs transcribed into western notation. Although many of the songs were in a different key, I was able to slide my hand up the fingerboard of the violin and transpose in my head while we were playing. It was a little difficult at first, but I soon got the hang of it. Many in the group were familiar with these songs, and I spent nearly three hours sitting cross-legged on the floor of a wooden hut going from one to another. After the three hours, I had to excuse myself for want of rest and luncheon.
The song uploaded here is of the first time the group and I played the song “Oh Pray Tey Srok Khmer” (Homage to country-state of Khmer people), and was recorded after one guy was asked not to play to spike fiddle because he played out of tune. I plan to do a more full analysis on the recording, but judging from its sound the music is largely homophonic. This is that the melody is followed throughout the song, which is repeated several times, but that there are slight deviations from it.
(My apologies for the picture at the beginning of the movie, but it is the only way to upload audio files to blogger.)
My ethnomusicology skills are admittedly rusty, but I am hoping to learn more about music of this kind. I have no idea where this discovery of musical tradition will lead me to, but I am pretty excited about it.
The group consisted of several instruments, with the addition of myself on the violin. The name of this kind of ensemble in Khmer is a vung phleng kar, which usually can be found at weddings. All of the musicians played chordophones, which means that they had strings, and they played with a good amount of skill. There was a kimm (a small hammered zither), a krapeu (three stringed zither), a tror chhe (spike fiddle tuned to G-D), and a tror so tauch (D-A), and one or two drums.
I was curious to see how the group would receive the western violin, but the fact is that the instrument is so similar to its eastern cousin, the spiked fiddle, that the members of the group warmed to its sound. My salvation in gaining acceptance was in the fact that I had a copy of a book containing many Cambodian children’s songs transcribed into western notation. Although many of the songs were in a different key, I was able to slide my hand up the fingerboard of the violin and transpose in my head while we were playing. It was a little difficult at first, but I soon got the hang of it. Many in the group were familiar with these songs, and I spent nearly three hours sitting cross-legged on the floor of a wooden hut going from one to another. After the three hours, I had to excuse myself for want of rest and luncheon.
The song uploaded here is of the first time the group and I played the song “Oh Pray Tey Srok Khmer” (Homage to country-state of Khmer people), and was recorded after one guy was asked not to play to spike fiddle because he played out of tune. I plan to do a more full analysis on the recording, but judging from its sound the music is largely homophonic. This is that the melody is followed throughout the song, which is repeated several times, but that there are slight deviations from it.
(My apologies for the picture at the beginning of the movie, but it is the only way to upload audio files to blogger.)
My ethnomusicology skills are admittedly rusty, but I am hoping to learn more about music of this kind. I have no idea where this discovery of musical tradition will lead me to, but I am pretty excited about it.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Looking at America From Cambodia via Australia
I remember America. I have not spent such an amount of time in this place that I have forgotten where it is that I have come from. After an intense, sudden, and dramatic change in one’s lifestyle, it is easy to forget. I have been in this country for over three months now, but for some reason it feels like I have been here much longer. I remember America with as many memories as I can call to mind, but I do not pine away for hamburgers and the golden shores of California every night. This is so despite the fact that these memories do make for excellent daydreaming. Rather, I remember America because I am excited about what is happening over there right now.
When I receive news about what is going on in the world, it is most often by FM radio. Other sources of information come by mail, which I receive once a month, and by sporadic access to the Internet. However, these are not as readily available as the information I receive wirelessly. In the north of country, the only radio station that broadcasts on the FM band in English is Radio Australia. The reception is clear on most days, although I usually have to do some frequent adjustments to the antenna. Picking up stations on the shortwave band is rather unreliable and only available at night, due to the sun’s rays hitting the upper reaches of the atmosphere, and this makes the Australian news station my only readily available source of information about the world. When I am preparing for school in the morning, the program that is usually on the air is called Connect Asia, which has some information about Cambodia or the region of Southeast Asia. It is through this program that I am able receive the latest updates about the dispute over the current border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia.
Other than this particular one, most of the programs that Radio Australia broadcasts are about Australia. As a frequent listener to this station, I have learned that wallabies are a frequent cause of traffic accidents in the northern territories, and that there is a great environmental controversy surrounding the building of a pulp mill in Tasmania. On occasion, there are some brief snippets about America. However, this changed completely on the day of November 4th. The entire day was dedicated to covering the US presidential election, and there was barely any other news about the rest of the world.
When Radio Australia announced that Barack Obama was expected to win the election, I was sitting motionless next to my radio. I had just returned hastily from the school to have lunch after the morning’s session of classes, and I was eagerly anticipating the frequent updates. I listened to both John McCain as he gave his concession speech, and to Barack Obama as he gave his victory speech. When the time came for lunch, I told my host family and the other teachers who ate with us the news of what was happening in America. They had no idea that the country was even having an election, but they were happy that I was happy at its result. I kept the radio turned on for most of the day while I did laundry and other household chores, and listened to whatever program was on.
On the whole, it seemed that the Australian media welcomed the news that Obama will be the next US president. One program featured a panel discussion with listeners calling in and sharing their views, and most of the comments had to do with how Obama might treat the Australian-American alliance. There was also some discussion about how the election of a black man as president of a predominately white nation was symbolic of what America represented to the world; this dream of not being a prisoner of your social class. At least for now, the new administration fits in exactly about what the Australians, and probably most everyone else in the world, judge American culture to be.
As an American living abroad, I could not be happier with the news. When I have traveled over the past eight years, I have continually been ashamed of America’s standing in the world as an arrogant, bullying, and blundering superpower. I am relieved, to say the least, that I no longer will have to prove to every foreigner I meet that not all Americans are like George W. Bush. I also imagine that the American talking heads are raising the same points that their Australian counterparts have discussed on the air. That is that while there is this euphoria surrounding the end of the Bush presidency, there are a lot of expectations placed on the shoulders of our new man in the White House. Some of these expectations may be realistic and reasonable, but others may be not.
Much remains to be seen what will happen in the next four years, but I am personally very excited about Obama’s plan for the Peace Corps. Our budget was cut dramatically recently, and there has been a lot rumors flying around about what is going to happen to us poor PCV’s. I am sure that some of us have imagined some nightmarish situation where the Peace Corps tells us what the true ramifications of what the budget will be. I myself dreamed one night of getting a text message on my cell phone that read, “I’m sorry to inform you that due to recent budget cuts, we will no longer be providing medical treatment for some of the more costly diseases such as Typhoid or Malaria. Please see the nearest practitioner of the more cost-effective treatments, such as traditional medicine, instead.” I woke up with a start, for the traditional methods of healing in this country frighten me to no end. I am therefore very grateful that Obama was elected because of his commitment to service, and because of his plan to increase the size of the Peace Corps to 16,000 people. I imagine that that would mean more money for us for things like secondary projects, grants, teaching supplies, etc.
I have faith that things will change. Perhaps even for people like me.
When I receive news about what is going on in the world, it is most often by FM radio. Other sources of information come by mail, which I receive once a month, and by sporadic access to the Internet. However, these are not as readily available as the information I receive wirelessly. In the north of country, the only radio station that broadcasts on the FM band in English is Radio Australia. The reception is clear on most days, although I usually have to do some frequent adjustments to the antenna. Picking up stations on the shortwave band is rather unreliable and only available at night, due to the sun’s rays hitting the upper reaches of the atmosphere, and this makes the Australian news station my only readily available source of information about the world. When I am preparing for school in the morning, the program that is usually on the air is called Connect Asia, which has some information about Cambodia or the region of Southeast Asia. It is through this program that I am able receive the latest updates about the dispute over the current border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia.
Other than this particular one, most of the programs that Radio Australia broadcasts are about Australia. As a frequent listener to this station, I have learned that wallabies are a frequent cause of traffic accidents in the northern territories, and that there is a great environmental controversy surrounding the building of a pulp mill in Tasmania. On occasion, there are some brief snippets about America. However, this changed completely on the day of November 4th. The entire day was dedicated to covering the US presidential election, and there was barely any other news about the rest of the world.
When Radio Australia announced that Barack Obama was expected to win the election, I was sitting motionless next to my radio. I had just returned hastily from the school to have lunch after the morning’s session of classes, and I was eagerly anticipating the frequent updates. I listened to both John McCain as he gave his concession speech, and to Barack Obama as he gave his victory speech. When the time came for lunch, I told my host family and the other teachers who ate with us the news of what was happening in America. They had no idea that the country was even having an election, but they were happy that I was happy at its result. I kept the radio turned on for most of the day while I did laundry and other household chores, and listened to whatever program was on.
On the whole, it seemed that the Australian media welcomed the news that Obama will be the next US president. One program featured a panel discussion with listeners calling in and sharing their views, and most of the comments had to do with how Obama might treat the Australian-American alliance. There was also some discussion about how the election of a black man as president of a predominately white nation was symbolic of what America represented to the world; this dream of not being a prisoner of your social class. At least for now, the new administration fits in exactly about what the Australians, and probably most everyone else in the world, judge American culture to be.
As an American living abroad, I could not be happier with the news. When I have traveled over the past eight years, I have continually been ashamed of America’s standing in the world as an arrogant, bullying, and blundering superpower. I am relieved, to say the least, that I no longer will have to prove to every foreigner I meet that not all Americans are like George W. Bush. I also imagine that the American talking heads are raising the same points that their Australian counterparts have discussed on the air. That is that while there is this euphoria surrounding the end of the Bush presidency, there are a lot of expectations placed on the shoulders of our new man in the White House. Some of these expectations may be realistic and reasonable, but others may be not.
Much remains to be seen what will happen in the next four years, but I am personally very excited about Obama’s plan for the Peace Corps. Our budget was cut dramatically recently, and there has been a lot rumors flying around about what is going to happen to us poor PCV’s. I am sure that some of us have imagined some nightmarish situation where the Peace Corps tells us what the true ramifications of what the budget will be. I myself dreamed one night of getting a text message on my cell phone that read, “I’m sorry to inform you that due to recent budget cuts, we will no longer be providing medical treatment for some of the more costly diseases such as Typhoid or Malaria. Please see the nearest practitioner of the more cost-effective treatments, such as traditional medicine, instead.” I woke up with a start, for the traditional methods of healing in this country frighten me to no end. I am therefore very grateful that Obama was elected because of his commitment to service, and because of his plan to increase the size of the Peace Corps to 16,000 people. I imagine that that would mean more money for us for things like secondary projects, grants, teaching supplies, etc.
I have faith that things will change. Perhaps even for people like me.
Working Notes on Siem Reap
Siem Reap is a town in Cambodia that has been described hundreds of times in travel journals, blogs, books, and magazines over the last century. The simple reason for this is that the town is a base camp from which one can see the temple compounds of Anchor Wat, Anchor Thom, and a variety of other sites. The airport allows tourists to quickly fly from Thailand, stay at one of the many luxurious and exotic looking hotels, and visit the famous sites. The French colonial architecture and the hundreds of signs in English of the town alone give it a certain artificial atmosphere.
The town offers many western services and amenities because the place is such a tourist hub, and such organization and availability of western products is not without its cost. Siem Reap is a town that is ready to suck the very lint out of your wallet. When I go there on bi-monthly trips, the thing that almost always empties my wallet is food. Were I given an unlimited amount of money to spend in one day there, I would buy peanut butter, Nutella, Pepperidge Farm cookies, granola, and cheese from Lucky Mart, omelets and yogurt breakfasts with coffee at Common Grounds Café, hamburgers at Burgers Without Borders, pizza dinners at le Papier Tigre or the Pizza Company, and maybe after dinner drinks at a bar down the street named Anchor What?. I assure you that this would cost an obscene amount of money, particularly for a person who is used to paying about thirty cents for coffee in rural towns.
I have come to view western food as being an evil temptress. She can be found in the places that provide such things, and the alluring atmosphere in there is her accomplice. I can provide an excellent example of why this is so. There exists near pub street, which is aptly named, a coffee bar/restaurant named the Blue Pumpkin. It has a balcony upstairs where I can relax and eat a very nice breakfast, and the expansive room behind it is lined with white linen couches. Several large windows look out onto the street below, and the patrons are usually quiet enough so that one can work undisturbed. It is also air-conditioned, which is a rare enough luxury that can make you never want to leave the place at all. If you dine there you can use their complementary wifi, and you can stay there for as long as you like. The danger of this, however, is that one breakfast turns into ordering another cup of orange juice, to another cup of orange juice, to maybe a lime-watermelon smoothie, and pretty soon you have spent twelve dollars. It may not seem like much to those reading this in America, but it really is if you have a tight budget.
Surprisingly, however, western food is alone in her efforts to rob me blind. None of the other goods and crafts appeal to me as much as they do to the tourists. For example, I once debated whether or not to buy a very nice looking bedspread from one of the tourists markets. Upon thinking about what it would look like in my room, the thought did occur to me that this expensive piece of weaving would simply be eaten alive by the little black bugs that have become my chief annoyance of late.
I hate Siem Reap, and I love it at the same time. I love having access to the Internet, sending mail, and eating ice cream all at same time. I hate having to pay for it all, and knowing that I will not see it for several weeks on end. Oddly enough, what is more difficult for me is coming back to Anchor having enjoyed everything western for a few days. It takes me at least a week to get back into the swing of things because this town is so dramatically different from where I live.
Culture shock, it seems, has become a permanent fixture in my life.
The town offers many western services and amenities because the place is such a tourist hub, and such organization and availability of western products is not without its cost. Siem Reap is a town that is ready to suck the very lint out of your wallet. When I go there on bi-monthly trips, the thing that almost always empties my wallet is food. Were I given an unlimited amount of money to spend in one day there, I would buy peanut butter, Nutella, Pepperidge Farm cookies, granola, and cheese from Lucky Mart, omelets and yogurt breakfasts with coffee at Common Grounds Café, hamburgers at Burgers Without Borders, pizza dinners at le Papier Tigre or the Pizza Company, and maybe after dinner drinks at a bar down the street named Anchor What?. I assure you that this would cost an obscene amount of money, particularly for a person who is used to paying about thirty cents for coffee in rural towns.
I have come to view western food as being an evil temptress. She can be found in the places that provide such things, and the alluring atmosphere in there is her accomplice. I can provide an excellent example of why this is so. There exists near pub street, which is aptly named, a coffee bar/restaurant named the Blue Pumpkin. It has a balcony upstairs where I can relax and eat a very nice breakfast, and the expansive room behind it is lined with white linen couches. Several large windows look out onto the street below, and the patrons are usually quiet enough so that one can work undisturbed. It is also air-conditioned, which is a rare enough luxury that can make you never want to leave the place at all. If you dine there you can use their complementary wifi, and you can stay there for as long as you like. The danger of this, however, is that one breakfast turns into ordering another cup of orange juice, to another cup of orange juice, to maybe a lime-watermelon smoothie, and pretty soon you have spent twelve dollars. It may not seem like much to those reading this in America, but it really is if you have a tight budget.
Surprisingly, however, western food is alone in her efforts to rob me blind. None of the other goods and crafts appeal to me as much as they do to the tourists. For example, I once debated whether or not to buy a very nice looking bedspread from one of the tourists markets. Upon thinking about what it would look like in my room, the thought did occur to me that this expensive piece of weaving would simply be eaten alive by the little black bugs that have become my chief annoyance of late.
I hate Siem Reap, and I love it at the same time. I love having access to the Internet, sending mail, and eating ice cream all at same time. I hate having to pay for it all, and knowing that I will not see it for several weeks on end. Oddly enough, what is more difficult for me is coming back to Anchor having enjoyed everything western for a few days. It takes me at least a week to get back into the swing of things because this town is so dramatically different from where I live.
Culture shock, it seems, has become a permanent fixture in my life.
Beware of Carelessness In Your Work
Do not worry, for there was no injury suffered by anyone in this accident. It happens more often than you would think.
My School is Flooded
This is, I’m afraid to say, what the grounds of my school look like now. The rainy season has come and dumped enough water in this district that flooding has lasted for several weeks now. Every time I come to school, I ride my bicycle through a low-lying lake. When I walk to class, I have to roll up my pants and trudge through the mud to where I am supposed to teach. When I return home, I wash off my feet vigorously with soap and water for fear of some infection that might have found itself attached to the extremities. It is quite awful to have to do this. Every day I pray that the rains will stop soon and that the waters will go down, but so far my prayers have not been answered.
The Mosquito
I am the vampire
Made real from the depths of your imagination.
I lurk in the dark places during the day
Creeping slowly
From underneath your papers and books
To the insides of your clothes.
At dusk I am fearless
And the world is my kingdom.
You fear me
Because you know our bite carries the possibility
Of deadly disease.
I am always around you
Even when you think that I am not
You may kill me with smoke, flame, poison, and electrocution
But there are thousands like me to take my place
You may hide in your nets day and night
But we are always waiting just outside them.
We will always win
And you know it.
Made real from the depths of your imagination.
I lurk in the dark places during the day
Creeping slowly
From underneath your papers and books
To the insides of your clothes.
At dusk I am fearless
And the world is my kingdom.
You fear me
Because you know our bite carries the possibility
Of deadly disease.
I am always around you
Even when you think that I am not
You may kill me with smoke, flame, poison, and electrocution
But there are thousands like me to take my place
You may hide in your nets day and night
But we are always waiting just outside them.
We will always win
And you know it.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Where I Write These Things
In the evening, I usually retreat to an area under a large blue-green mosquito net in my room. In there is my bookshelf and desk, and it is the place where I write these entries at night until exhaustion overtakes me. Since electricity is very expensive in my town, I have a car battery that is connected to an am-meter. It charges my computer and cell phone. The copy of Rolling Stone magazine in this picture is from July.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The Assignment So Far
In the four weeks now that I have lived in the Anchor district, I have had the opportunity to spend about three weeks at the high school when was in session. In that time, I have observed and noted the abilities of both the students and teachers to communicate in English, and I have come to several conclusions about each of these groups. The long and the short of it is that both the students and teachers cannot speak English very well, with the exception of my counterpart, Mr. Nou. My work as an English teacher in this community is clearly laid out for the next two years, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I do not write this entry in an effort to be condescending or overly critical of the community or its students, for I am merely trying to describe the naked truth of what I have seen and heard. In examining it, I have found that the student’s lack of English skills has to do with a lack of learning resources and some cultural elements that inhibit the pursuit of study. The latter is something that I will discuss first, because it affects my teaching most directly.
Culture is a curious subject, and understanding it is often a lesson in humility. After living here for a few months, I thought that I would move beyond the scratched surface of understanding how Cambodians think. However, this is quite the opposite. In trying to understand the cultural rules that seem to inhibit a student’s ability to learn, I have scratched my head repeatedly in trying to understand why they do the things that they do. I have yet to figure out ways of overcoming them, but my hope is that by recording and taking notes on them I can understand them a little bit better.
While observing the students during my first week, I was struck by how incredibly shy the students were. When I introduced myself in front of my new classes of students during the first few days, they looked at me with a terrified expression on their faces. I could not help but find it similar to the way that my two-year-old neighbor looks at me. The eyes are wide, the mouth stretched open or in a vague smile, the head is bent over (along with the overall posture), and all of the muscles in the face are frozen. Some of the students still look at me in this way even after I have taught in their classes several times and implored them to speak in class. The co-teachers I work with tell me that while the students welcome the idea of learning English from a native speaker, they are too shy to approach me and ask questions. Some of them have warmed to me, especially when I quoted a Cambodian proverb Khmer in class that translates into English as “If you are shy with your teacher, you will never learn. If you are shy with your wife, you will never have children.” However, for most of my classes this shyness inhibits them from speaking out loud at all.
During a class that I was observing, the Cambodian English teacher called on a female student to read a passage that was written in the book. The student refused, and said in Khmer that she could not read English. At this point, I had heard this from multiple students. In a moment of curiosity, I asked her privately if she really could not read English, or rather she was simply too shy to read in front of the class. She mumbled something unintelligible, averted her eyes, and made it clear with her body language that she had little to no interest in speaking with me any further. A little while later, I could hear her reading along with her friend from the book. In a culture where yes means no and no means yes, saying things like “No, teacher, I can’t read English” are part of an age-old tradition of saving face that is common in many parts of Asia. The student probably could read English, but she did not think that her English was sufficient enough to read in front of the class. So she claimed that she could not read English at all. I initially thought that if only this shyness was overcome, then the students would speak English well. When I gave my students an English test for the first, I was proved wrong about this theory.
A few weeks ago, I helped give a test to the entire tenth and eleventh grade class in order to test their understanding of English. Plan International, which is an active NGO in my village, recently donated several new computers and a spiffy solar powered generating system to the school, and the test was a way of determining which students should be given the opportunity to use them and learn computer skills. The test was fairly straight forward, allowing the student to conjugate English verbs and determine appropriate tenses. The students themselves are supposed to have had at least three years of English so far, and the difficulty level of the test seemed appropriate when I looked it over. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
The problem began with the word “choose.” While proctoring an tenth grade class, I had to write the test on the blackboard for the students to copy and then do. Since our school does not have the resources for generating large amounts of photocopies, simple tests and quizzes are often done this way. The word in question was in the overall instructions that required the student to choose the correct verb tense from two that were given. For example, “While Susan was driving, she was receiving/received a call on her mobile phone.” After a few minutes of looking at the word, one student finally approached me and said that he and the others could not understand what this word meant. I tried to explain it as best I could in both English and Khmer, but the students still had no idea what this word meant. It was not until I grabbed a Khmer teacher who was passing by the class that I was able to translate what this word meant. For the rest of time remaining in that period, I sat behind a desk in front of the class. The faces of the students were reduced to black in the light of an oncoming morning thunderstorm, and I stared at them in a state of bewilderment. Three years of English, I thought. Three years of English and they can’t understand the word “choose.”
It is hard to understand why this could happen unless you know something about the district’s industry and geographical location. Eighty percent of the workforce in Anchor is involved in farming. Whether they are involved with growing rice, tending the stocks in a fish farm, raising livestock, or some other activity, most of their lives are spent in the fields. For the children of the Anchor, this is ultimately their destiny whether they like it or not. Like their forefathers before them, they too will probably become farmers themselves. Siem Reap is only around 50k away, and one would think that the promise of money and better jobs in the tourist industry there would be a luring opportunity away from the back breaking work of picking rice. A lot of people who I have talked to know someone who works there, and the their success is widely circulated. While the promise of moving there and earning more money is certainly present, the reality of going there is not. For the children in towns closer to Siem Reap, it certainly is. The town of Pourk (pronounced with a silent k on the end) is close enough to Siem Reap for this dream to become an attainable reality having better human and material resources.
When I taught an eleventh grade class in Kampong for a week, the same sort of problems existed. The shyness, the lack of comprehension, and the inability to pronounce certain words were all there, but they were all there on a much smaller scale. In general, the student’s ability in that district was much better this one. However, Kampong is a much bigger town with greater resources for learning. The high school has many English teachers, the town has many bookshops, and it has a road connecting it to the wealth and opportunity of Phnom Penh. Anchor district is a much smaller place, with fewer resources. Here the students can barely understand the words in their books, much less the words that come out of my mouth. This may sound exaggerated, but I swear that it is true.
So, why teach children of this district English if they are just going to forget it when they have to go and work in the fields when they finish school? It is a hard question to answer, and I would be lying if I said that I had no trouble answering it. A simple way of looking at it has to do with the overall mission of Peace Corps in Cambodia itself. Essentially, what we are trying to do is improve the teaching methods of Cambodian English teachers. The reason why we teach primarily with counterparts is because we are trying to ease a shift from teacher centered learning techniques that those that are student centered. It is more of a teaching training assignment to give Cambodian teachers techniques to use in the classroom. These skills will hopefully be passed on to other teachers in the future for the benefit of the students. Aside from this, however, there is another way of possibly looking at it.
As part of the Peace Corps mission, we are charged with being unofficial ambassadors of the US in order to provide people in the world with a better image of America than what they know already. As the country director noted in our swearing in ceremony, “These are not the Americans that you have seen on television.” Part of this responsibility is explaining to our community about the positive aspects of America culture. The quest that many Americans have had to make a better life for themselves is one of these aspects that I can tell them about that could possibly have an impact. Whether or not this would create an entire generation of Willy Lomans is unforeseeable, but perhaps through teaching English to the children of Anchor, I can give them a skill that can enable them to do something more than be a rice farmer. This will probably not become a reality for many people in this community, but for a few who understand the value of education it might be.
It is difficult to determine what impact I will have on this community after I leave for America, but perhaps with a little education the people working at the bank will someday be from this town instead of one over forty kilometers away. I friend of mine recently asked me if I thought this whole thing was worth doing. I would have to say that yes, it is worth doing. There are more reasons behind this answer, but I think that having any kind of impact at all on this community will make the experience worth it because it would give the people of Anchor to have something that they would have otherwise never gotten.
Culture is a curious subject, and understanding it is often a lesson in humility. After living here for a few months, I thought that I would move beyond the scratched surface of understanding how Cambodians think. However, this is quite the opposite. In trying to understand the cultural rules that seem to inhibit a student’s ability to learn, I have scratched my head repeatedly in trying to understand why they do the things that they do. I have yet to figure out ways of overcoming them, but my hope is that by recording and taking notes on them I can understand them a little bit better.
While observing the students during my first week, I was struck by how incredibly shy the students were. When I introduced myself in front of my new classes of students during the first few days, they looked at me with a terrified expression on their faces. I could not help but find it similar to the way that my two-year-old neighbor looks at me. The eyes are wide, the mouth stretched open or in a vague smile, the head is bent over (along with the overall posture), and all of the muscles in the face are frozen. Some of the students still look at me in this way even after I have taught in their classes several times and implored them to speak in class. The co-teachers I work with tell me that while the students welcome the idea of learning English from a native speaker, they are too shy to approach me and ask questions. Some of them have warmed to me, especially when I quoted a Cambodian proverb Khmer in class that translates into English as “If you are shy with your teacher, you will never learn. If you are shy with your wife, you will never have children.” However, for most of my classes this shyness inhibits them from speaking out loud at all.
During a class that I was observing, the Cambodian English teacher called on a female student to read a passage that was written in the book. The student refused, and said in Khmer that she could not read English. At this point, I had heard this from multiple students. In a moment of curiosity, I asked her privately if she really could not read English, or rather she was simply too shy to read in front of the class. She mumbled something unintelligible, averted her eyes, and made it clear with her body language that she had little to no interest in speaking with me any further. A little while later, I could hear her reading along with her friend from the book. In a culture where yes means no and no means yes, saying things like “No, teacher, I can’t read English” are part of an age-old tradition of saving face that is common in many parts of Asia. The student probably could read English, but she did not think that her English was sufficient enough to read in front of the class. So she claimed that she could not read English at all. I initially thought that if only this shyness was overcome, then the students would speak English well. When I gave my students an English test for the first, I was proved wrong about this theory.
A few weeks ago, I helped give a test to the entire tenth and eleventh grade class in order to test their understanding of English. Plan International, which is an active NGO in my village, recently donated several new computers and a spiffy solar powered generating system to the school, and the test was a way of determining which students should be given the opportunity to use them and learn computer skills. The test was fairly straight forward, allowing the student to conjugate English verbs and determine appropriate tenses. The students themselves are supposed to have had at least three years of English so far, and the difficulty level of the test seemed appropriate when I looked it over. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
The problem began with the word “choose.” While proctoring an tenth grade class, I had to write the test on the blackboard for the students to copy and then do. Since our school does not have the resources for generating large amounts of photocopies, simple tests and quizzes are often done this way. The word in question was in the overall instructions that required the student to choose the correct verb tense from two that were given. For example, “While Susan was driving, she was receiving/received a call on her mobile phone.” After a few minutes of looking at the word, one student finally approached me and said that he and the others could not understand what this word meant. I tried to explain it as best I could in both English and Khmer, but the students still had no idea what this word meant. It was not until I grabbed a Khmer teacher who was passing by the class that I was able to translate what this word meant. For the rest of time remaining in that period, I sat behind a desk in front of the class. The faces of the students were reduced to black in the light of an oncoming morning thunderstorm, and I stared at them in a state of bewilderment. Three years of English, I thought. Three years of English and they can’t understand the word “choose.”
It is hard to understand why this could happen unless you know something about the district’s industry and geographical location. Eighty percent of the workforce in Anchor is involved in farming. Whether they are involved with growing rice, tending the stocks in a fish farm, raising livestock, or some other activity, most of their lives are spent in the fields. For the children of the Anchor, this is ultimately their destiny whether they like it or not. Like their forefathers before them, they too will probably become farmers themselves. Siem Reap is only around 50k away, and one would think that the promise of money and better jobs in the tourist industry there would be a luring opportunity away from the back breaking work of picking rice. A lot of people who I have talked to know someone who works there, and the their success is widely circulated. While the promise of moving there and earning more money is certainly present, the reality of going there is not. For the children in towns closer to Siem Reap, it certainly is. The town of Pourk (pronounced with a silent k on the end) is close enough to Siem Reap for this dream to become an attainable reality having better human and material resources.
When I taught an eleventh grade class in Kampong for a week, the same sort of problems existed. The shyness, the lack of comprehension, and the inability to pronounce certain words were all there, but they were all there on a much smaller scale. In general, the student’s ability in that district was much better this one. However, Kampong is a much bigger town with greater resources for learning. The high school has many English teachers, the town has many bookshops, and it has a road connecting it to the wealth and opportunity of Phnom Penh. Anchor district is a much smaller place, with fewer resources. Here the students can barely understand the words in their books, much less the words that come out of my mouth. This may sound exaggerated, but I swear that it is true.
So, why teach children of this district English if they are just going to forget it when they have to go and work in the fields when they finish school? It is a hard question to answer, and I would be lying if I said that I had no trouble answering it. A simple way of looking at it has to do with the overall mission of Peace Corps in Cambodia itself. Essentially, what we are trying to do is improve the teaching methods of Cambodian English teachers. The reason why we teach primarily with counterparts is because we are trying to ease a shift from teacher centered learning techniques that those that are student centered. It is more of a teaching training assignment to give Cambodian teachers techniques to use in the classroom. These skills will hopefully be passed on to other teachers in the future for the benefit of the students. Aside from this, however, there is another way of possibly looking at it.
As part of the Peace Corps mission, we are charged with being unofficial ambassadors of the US in order to provide people in the world with a better image of America than what they know already. As the country director noted in our swearing in ceremony, “These are not the Americans that you have seen on television.” Part of this responsibility is explaining to our community about the positive aspects of America culture. The quest that many Americans have had to make a better life for themselves is one of these aspects that I can tell them about that could possibly have an impact. Whether or not this would create an entire generation of Willy Lomans is unforeseeable, but perhaps through teaching English to the children of Anchor, I can give them a skill that can enable them to do something more than be a rice farmer. This will probably not become a reality for many people in this community, but for a few who understand the value of education it might be.
It is difficult to determine what impact I will have on this community after I leave for America, but perhaps with a little education the people working at the bank will someday be from this town instead of one over forty kilometers away. I friend of mine recently asked me if I thought this whole thing was worth doing. I would have to say that yes, it is worth doing. There are more reasons behind this answer, but I think that having any kind of impact at all on this community will make the experience worth it because it would give the people of Anchor to have something that they would have otherwise never gotten.
Sunday Morning Laundry
Eyes open. The alarm on the cell phone is going off next to my pillowed head. Why did I set it last night? It’s Sunday, no classes to teach, no places to go. All I have to do is laundry and make lesson plans for the week. Oh hell, I have to do laundry. That’s why I set the alarm last night. Eyes open. Eyes closed. Get up, Adrian, you’ve got to do laundry before the rain comes in the afternoon. Maybe it won’t rain today? No, there’s a reason why they call it the rainy season. It rains every day. Got to do laundry now. You wait too long to do it, it’ll only have an hour or so to dry. It’ll still be wet tomorrow, and will smell for the rest of the week. Sit up. Scratch my head and look at my legs and arms. No bug bites? Good. How about the neck and torso? None there either. Mosquito net must be doing its job. These days, though, it’s the little black flea like bugs that’ll get into bed with me when I least expect it. I think they’re attracted to the white sheets. Lift up the mosquito net and crawl under it.
Feet hit the floor. Roll up the net today? No, just tuck it in under the mattress to make sure nothing gets in. Open the window and let in the damp morning air. The sun’s beginning to get up as well. Another couple of hours and the heat will be good enough to dry all my clothes out on the line. Breakfast? I’ll get it later when I’m done from that café down the street. Queet tio chia muy café dtuck dah go dah gah, my favorite kind of breakfast. Chinese noodle soup mixed with beef, with iced coffee and condensed sterilized milk to drink. That’ll be good. The girls who work there are pretty friendly as well.
Got to get started. Walk to the bathroom and open to the door. Stand with two feet apart above the porcelain Turkish toilet. Pee. Flush it with two scoopfuls of water from the reservoir. Ants are crawling in and out of one of the cracks in the wall. They just don’t know when to take a hint. Poison them with the promethren that’s tucked away in the medical kit? Wait, another spider has created a web nearby. I’ll leave the ants to them. I’ll have my breakfast and they’ll have theirs.
Open the door of the bathroom. Grab the two plastic basins resting against the wall. Set them down on the floor, and pour water into each of them. Get the detergent and pour it into one of the basins. Keep the other one for rinse water. Bring over my dirty clothes and the plastic chair that sits in front of my desk. Put on the rubber gloves I bought at Lucky Mart. The detergent will kill my hands if I let it. Too many other health concerns just from living here Better prevent one if I can.
Pick up a t-shirt. It smells god-awful. Probably one that used for biking this past week when I got caught in the rain. Dunk it into the soapy water, and get it nice and wet. With one hand over the other and the fabric in between, start scrubbing vigorously back and forth. Get the collar, then the armpits, then anywhere else that has a stain. If needed, use a sprinkle more of detergent. My host sister in Kampong taught me how to do this, though if she were here she’d give me a heap of trouble about the way that I’m scrubbing. She was never satisfied with my laundry skills, no matter how hard I tried. Can’t a barang get a break? Never.
Take the t-shirt and wring it out. Make sure all the soap gets out of there. Dunk it unto the rinse water once, twice, three times. Wring it out again, and throw it on the tiled floor of the bathroom. Just washed the floor yesterday, so it’s okay to put the finished product over there. Another t-shirt, pair of underwear, same process. Pair of white socks. Why did I ever bring a pair of white socks with me to Cambodia? I can never get the stains out of them. I swear I’ve worked fifteen minutes on the underside of a sock once, and still couldn’t get the dirt out of it. Pair of pants, and its time to use the brush. Grab the plastic handle and scrub the lining, the rear, and the cuffs. Try to get the mud stains out as much as possible. Dunk it into the soapy water a few times and inspect it to make sure that there isn’t a stain I’ve missed.
Two more pairs of pants, underwear, and shirts and I’m done. Pick up the finished laundry pile from the floor and bring it outside quickly because it’s dripping all over me. Look at the line. Damn. All the space has been taken. Take my metal clothes rack, put everything hanging on it on the bed, and bring it outside. Take all the clothes that are wet, and put them on the rack outside in the blazing sun. Host mother is laughing at me, and though I don’t understand her I imagine that what she’s saying is some opprobrious remark. I laugh with her, sardonically. Should have looked to see if the line was full before getting started, but I’ve got no other time to do this other than now. In any case, I can bring the clothes inside in a hurry if it starts to pour. You can never tell when that’s going to be during the day, but it always happens.
Take the used water and pour it outside. Mop up the bathroom floor a bit, and make sure its clean. Change into more respectable clothes, and grab the wallet, watch, keys, cell phone, malaria pills, and a book to read over breakfast. Lock up, and head out. Exhausted, and its only 7 AM.
What did Culture Shock!:Cambodia have to say about this place? “With its incredibly cheap cost of living, Cambodia is an easy place for the less than well-heeled, underachieving, disillusioned Western male to hang out.” (96) Maybe for the less than well-heeled, underachieving, disillusioned western male this is easy, but these people probably have washing machines.
Feet hit the floor. Roll up the net today? No, just tuck it in under the mattress to make sure nothing gets in. Open the window and let in the damp morning air. The sun’s beginning to get up as well. Another couple of hours and the heat will be good enough to dry all my clothes out on the line. Breakfast? I’ll get it later when I’m done from that café down the street. Queet tio chia muy café dtuck dah go dah gah, my favorite kind of breakfast. Chinese noodle soup mixed with beef, with iced coffee and condensed sterilized milk to drink. That’ll be good. The girls who work there are pretty friendly as well.
Got to get started. Walk to the bathroom and open to the door. Stand with two feet apart above the porcelain Turkish toilet. Pee. Flush it with two scoopfuls of water from the reservoir. Ants are crawling in and out of one of the cracks in the wall. They just don’t know when to take a hint. Poison them with the promethren that’s tucked away in the medical kit? Wait, another spider has created a web nearby. I’ll leave the ants to them. I’ll have my breakfast and they’ll have theirs.
Open the door of the bathroom. Grab the two plastic basins resting against the wall. Set them down on the floor, and pour water into each of them. Get the detergent and pour it into one of the basins. Keep the other one for rinse water. Bring over my dirty clothes and the plastic chair that sits in front of my desk. Put on the rubber gloves I bought at Lucky Mart. The detergent will kill my hands if I let it. Too many other health concerns just from living here Better prevent one if I can.
Pick up a t-shirt. It smells god-awful. Probably one that used for biking this past week when I got caught in the rain. Dunk it into the soapy water, and get it nice and wet. With one hand over the other and the fabric in between, start scrubbing vigorously back and forth. Get the collar, then the armpits, then anywhere else that has a stain. If needed, use a sprinkle more of detergent. My host sister in Kampong taught me how to do this, though if she were here she’d give me a heap of trouble about the way that I’m scrubbing. She was never satisfied with my laundry skills, no matter how hard I tried. Can’t a barang get a break? Never.
Take the t-shirt and wring it out. Make sure all the soap gets out of there. Dunk it unto the rinse water once, twice, three times. Wring it out again, and throw it on the tiled floor of the bathroom. Just washed the floor yesterday, so it’s okay to put the finished product over there. Another t-shirt, pair of underwear, same process. Pair of white socks. Why did I ever bring a pair of white socks with me to Cambodia? I can never get the stains out of them. I swear I’ve worked fifteen minutes on the underside of a sock once, and still couldn’t get the dirt out of it. Pair of pants, and its time to use the brush. Grab the plastic handle and scrub the lining, the rear, and the cuffs. Try to get the mud stains out as much as possible. Dunk it into the soapy water a few times and inspect it to make sure that there isn’t a stain I’ve missed.
Two more pairs of pants, underwear, and shirts and I’m done. Pick up the finished laundry pile from the floor and bring it outside quickly because it’s dripping all over me. Look at the line. Damn. All the space has been taken. Take my metal clothes rack, put everything hanging on it on the bed, and bring it outside. Take all the clothes that are wet, and put them on the rack outside in the blazing sun. Host mother is laughing at me, and though I don’t understand her I imagine that what she’s saying is some opprobrious remark. I laugh with her, sardonically. Should have looked to see if the line was full before getting started, but I’ve got no other time to do this other than now. In any case, I can bring the clothes inside in a hurry if it starts to pour. You can never tell when that’s going to be during the day, but it always happens.
Take the used water and pour it outside. Mop up the bathroom floor a bit, and make sure its clean. Change into more respectable clothes, and grab the wallet, watch, keys, cell phone, malaria pills, and a book to read over breakfast. Lock up, and head out. Exhausted, and its only 7 AM.
What did Culture Shock!:Cambodia have to say about this place? “With its incredibly cheap cost of living, Cambodia is an easy place for the less than well-heeled, underachieving, disillusioned Western male to hang out.” (96) Maybe for the less than well-heeled, underachieving, disillusioned western male this is easy, but these people probably have washing machines.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
The Woman At The End of the Road
Every day after school, I walk to the statue of this woman on the edge of the town. She stands at the intersection between the roads that lead to Varin and to Pourk.
Friday, October 17, 2008
"On a Cold Night They Came"
A Quiet Town With a Violent Past
The road that leads from the villages of Daun Sva to Bott in the province of Siem Reap is a particularly pretty one. Trees of grey and white bark line one of the few paved roads in the region, and the view from a bicycle stretches across the fields of brown wheat and green rice plants to the hills of the Varin district. In Bott village itself, a Wat with a large and ornately decorated gate stands where the road curves toward the smoke colored hills in the distance. In this place of seemingly rural tranquility, however, there is a hidden danger. A few kilometers outside of Bott, there are little stone markers placed on paths leading into the rice fields. The markers are painted red and white, and have the design of a skull and crossbones painted on them to indicate the presence of mines and unexploded ordinance. The Halo Trust, a British de-mining organization that is active in Cambodia, placed the signs there some years ago, but even their warning goes unheeded by some. It is common to see farmers tending to their cattle herds or walking among their crops out there. It is still not clear to me whether or not they understand the danger that is involved in their action. I have talked to them on a few occasions using what little Khmer I know in order to gain any information about these fields. They know that there are mines out there, but they continue to go on farming despite the danger. It is the only thing that they can do to still make a living.
There are many mines in this area, and their presence is a symbol of the violence that Cambodia suffered over a period of nearly thirty years. In talking with some of the teachers at my high school, I have learned something about the violent history of Anchor. In order to explain some of it, I must of course describe briefly something of Cambodia’s history during the past thirty years. In 1970, a General named Lon Nol took power in a Coup that deposed King Norodom Sihanouk. Sihanouk in turn backed a revolutionary guerilla group named the Khmer Rouge, and supported them in their fight against Lon Nol. When the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, they forced people out their homes all over the country to work in a gigantic agrarian genocide that caused the deaths of millions. In 1979, Vietnam invaded the country in response to attacks on Vietnamese civilians, and occupied the country until 1989. In 1992, the UN transitional government authority (UNTAC) came in to help support Cambodia’s first democratic elections that resulted with Hun Sein, the current prime minister, gaining power in 1997. From what I have gathered, the district of Anchor has witnessed a small part of many of these major events that I have quickly reviewed.
Anchor was one of the last districts to be captured by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970’s. Some of the residents have told me that when Lon Nol’s government was fighting with them, many people died here and in the surrounding areas. It also seems that almost everyone here knows someone who was killed during the time of genocide, whether it was an uncle, father, cousin, or some other kind of relative. When the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge placed mines on the roads and in the fields to halt the invading army’s progress.
After the Vietnamese had conquered most of the country, fighting between the Khmer Rouge and government soldiers lasted for many years afterwards. The Khmer Rouge soldiers attacked the police and the army multiple times during this period, and civilians were in a constant state of alarm. UNTAC sent several workers to the Anchor district during the 1990’s, and two of them were killed in the ongoing violence. A mine on the road blew up underneath the car of one, and other received a fatal bullet wound in the neck. From what I am told by people in the village, the latter came from Bangladesh and lived at the Wat with the monks until he died. Until Hun Sein took power in 1997, there was virtually no peace in the area. The central town’s appearance today looks so peaceful, and it is hard to imagine the horrible things that went on here some years ago. Yet they did.
On a Cold Night They Came
This is the story of Mr. Jia Bon Tooen. He is a friend of mine who works in the office at my high school, and I have come to know him through regular visits to his cell phone shop in the market. On one such occasion, he told this story about his early days as a teacher in this district. It is a tale of survival, and the misery that the people faced in a time before the days of UNTAC. This is his story, and I have tried to put it down in writing as best I can.
When I came to this district as a secondary school teacher in 1989, I lived two different lives. By day, I taught physics, chemistry, and math. By night, I traded my chalkboard and teaching materials for a rifle and grenade belt. You must believe when I say that I never in my life wanted to become a soldier, but the situation at the time was desperate. When I arrived at the school in the beginning of the academic year, the school director told me that I would not be paid if I did not perform nightly guard duty for the local army company. Rather than face starvation and misery, I carried the gun. While the soldiers and police slept during the night, a ragtag band of teachers and office workers kept watch over the town. Every night, we were afraid that the Khmer Rouge would attack. We knew that they hid in the forested hills not far from the town in the district of Varin, and that at night they would creep through the fields to attack the town. It was only a matter of time before it did, and I will tell you how it happened.
It was a cold night when they came. At four in the morning, I was standing outside of my house near the main road that leads through the center of town. A few hundred meters away, the police and army slept at the barracks near the secondary school while I waited for my shift to be over. Another hour, and I could go back and prepare for the morning session. I crossed my arms, rested the butt of my rifle on the ground, and leaned against a post to try to maybe sleep a little while no one could see me. Just as I closed my eyes, I heard a loud whistling. I looked up, and something fell from the sky and exploded a hundred meters away with a large explosion that shook the earth. I dropped to my hands and knees as other bombs came and crashed in the same way.
During a brief pause in the shelling, I suddenly began to hear the sounds of pounding feet. I looked in the opposite direction of where the bombs struck, and I saw the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge. Hundreds of them were running down the road dressed in their Chinese made green drab uniforms. Their heads were wrapped in red bandannas, their feet protected by sandals, and their waists were clothed in ammunition. I could see them coming, but they could not see me in the darkness. I acted quickly and jumped into a muddy canal that was by the side of the road next to me. In the dark, I threw off my ammunition, grenades, and pitched my rifle into the black water. I did not dare fight the Khmer Rouge, for I knew that I would be killed if I did. I was a teacher, not a soldier. I didn’t sign up for this.
I could hear the pounding feet running by me as I breathed heavily among the reeds and muck of my watery hiding place. My head was just above the water, but despite my efforts to hide myself I still feared that the Khmer Rouge would see me. When the pounding of feet passed near me, I felt fear in the pit of my stomach. I was not a Christian man then, but if I were I would have offered God anything He wanted if He kept me alive that night.
As soon as the soldiers passed my hiding place, I began to hear gunfire. The Khmer Rouge were fighting with the soldiers near the school, but from where I was I could not see them. Slowly and carefully as to not make a sound, I crept on my belly like a snake from my hiding place through the mud to see what was going on. As soon as I reached the road, I saw that the Khmer Rouge had almost completely overrun the soldiers and police stationed at the barracks. The government soldiers were retreating, firing their guns sporadically as they went. These men constantly bullied the civilians in the town, but when it came down to actually fighting all of their bravado was stripped from them. When the shooting finally stopped, I walked slowly back to my house. I went up to the second floor, took off my wet and muddy clothes, and hid under my bed. However, the terror of the night was not yet over.
When the Khmer Rouge had taken all that they wanted from the barracks, they turned on the town. They looted everything that they could find, and I could hear them breaking down doors and smashing windows outside. One soldier came into my house, and stole my dishes. When his footsteps could be heard inside the house, I froze. The sound made it its way into my living room, and having not found anything of value in there the footsteps made their way into my kitchen. I could hear the clatter of my dishes as he dumped them into his crudely stitched sack and began to head for the door. In my misery and desperation, I decided to follow him to beg for my things back. Today, I do not know why I did this, as I could have stayed hidden where I was. I felt that it was the least I could do to protect what little I had.
I came downstairs with only a kromah wrapped around my waist, and followed the man as he left. A few steps out the front door, the soldier noticed that he was being followed. He turned around to face me with one hand holding his rifle, and the other carrying his stolen goods. The man looked like one who was deprived of even the simple comforts of life. His naked feet looked bruised and worn, and his dark and sun scorched face contrasted sharply with the red bandanna tied around his head. The green army clothes he wore were dirty and covered with mud around the ankles. He could have smelled awful as well, but I did not dare get close enough to him to tell if he did or not.
When the man looked at me with hardened eyes and a scowl, I put my hands together and pleaded with him to not take my dishes. I said that I was simple person without a lot of money. He dropped his sack and grinned, revealing a sinister smile of white broken teeth. He raised his rifle and asked me, “Why do you follow me?” and fired the gun several times. A spray of bullets struck the earth around my feet, and I thought for a moment that he would raise it and shoot me in the chest. However, he simply laughed and walked off to rejoin his comrades. I dropped to my knees in shock of what happened, and watched the Khmer Rouge wreak havoc in the town. Some of them simply robbed houses, but others did more damage. One smashed open a jewel case, and helped himself to as many watches as he liked. I retreated back to my hiding place soon after I was shot at, and the Khmer Rouge soon after retreated to theirs. The sun was coming up soon, and they knew that they were not safe in broad daylight from the government planes.
I did not go to school that day. I helped my friends and neighbors pick up the pieces of what had just happened. We knew that the Khmer Rouge would come again, but for the time being we could calm ourselves enough to avoid going mad with fright.
No one slept well the next night. No one who lived through what we did would have.
The road that leads from the villages of Daun Sva to Bott in the province of Siem Reap is a particularly pretty one. Trees of grey and white bark line one of the few paved roads in the region, and the view from a bicycle stretches across the fields of brown wheat and green rice plants to the hills of the Varin district. In Bott village itself, a Wat with a large and ornately decorated gate stands where the road curves toward the smoke colored hills in the distance. In this place of seemingly rural tranquility, however, there is a hidden danger. A few kilometers outside of Bott, there are little stone markers placed on paths leading into the rice fields. The markers are painted red and white, and have the design of a skull and crossbones painted on them to indicate the presence of mines and unexploded ordinance. The Halo Trust, a British de-mining organization that is active in Cambodia, placed the signs there some years ago, but even their warning goes unheeded by some. It is common to see farmers tending to their cattle herds or walking among their crops out there. It is still not clear to me whether or not they understand the danger that is involved in their action. I have talked to them on a few occasions using what little Khmer I know in order to gain any information about these fields. They know that there are mines out there, but they continue to go on farming despite the danger. It is the only thing that they can do to still make a living.
There are many mines in this area, and their presence is a symbol of the violence that Cambodia suffered over a period of nearly thirty years. In talking with some of the teachers at my high school, I have learned something about the violent history of Anchor. In order to explain some of it, I must of course describe briefly something of Cambodia’s history during the past thirty years. In 1970, a General named Lon Nol took power in a Coup that deposed King Norodom Sihanouk. Sihanouk in turn backed a revolutionary guerilla group named the Khmer Rouge, and supported them in their fight against Lon Nol. When the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, they forced people out their homes all over the country to work in a gigantic agrarian genocide that caused the deaths of millions. In 1979, Vietnam invaded the country in response to attacks on Vietnamese civilians, and occupied the country until 1989. In 1992, the UN transitional government authority (UNTAC) came in to help support Cambodia’s first democratic elections that resulted with Hun Sein, the current prime minister, gaining power in 1997. From what I have gathered, the district of Anchor has witnessed a small part of many of these major events that I have quickly reviewed.
Anchor was one of the last districts to be captured by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970’s. Some of the residents have told me that when Lon Nol’s government was fighting with them, many people died here and in the surrounding areas. It also seems that almost everyone here knows someone who was killed during the time of genocide, whether it was an uncle, father, cousin, or some other kind of relative. When the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge placed mines on the roads and in the fields to halt the invading army’s progress.
After the Vietnamese had conquered most of the country, fighting between the Khmer Rouge and government soldiers lasted for many years afterwards. The Khmer Rouge soldiers attacked the police and the army multiple times during this period, and civilians were in a constant state of alarm. UNTAC sent several workers to the Anchor district during the 1990’s, and two of them were killed in the ongoing violence. A mine on the road blew up underneath the car of one, and other received a fatal bullet wound in the neck. From what I am told by people in the village, the latter came from Bangladesh and lived at the Wat with the monks until he died. Until Hun Sein took power in 1997, there was virtually no peace in the area. The central town’s appearance today looks so peaceful, and it is hard to imagine the horrible things that went on here some years ago. Yet they did.
On a Cold Night They Came
This is the story of Mr. Jia Bon Tooen. He is a friend of mine who works in the office at my high school, and I have come to know him through regular visits to his cell phone shop in the market. On one such occasion, he told this story about his early days as a teacher in this district. It is a tale of survival, and the misery that the people faced in a time before the days of UNTAC. This is his story, and I have tried to put it down in writing as best I can.
When I came to this district as a secondary school teacher in 1989, I lived two different lives. By day, I taught physics, chemistry, and math. By night, I traded my chalkboard and teaching materials for a rifle and grenade belt. You must believe when I say that I never in my life wanted to become a soldier, but the situation at the time was desperate. When I arrived at the school in the beginning of the academic year, the school director told me that I would not be paid if I did not perform nightly guard duty for the local army company. Rather than face starvation and misery, I carried the gun. While the soldiers and police slept during the night, a ragtag band of teachers and office workers kept watch over the town. Every night, we were afraid that the Khmer Rouge would attack. We knew that they hid in the forested hills not far from the town in the district of Varin, and that at night they would creep through the fields to attack the town. It was only a matter of time before it did, and I will tell you how it happened.
It was a cold night when they came. At four in the morning, I was standing outside of my house near the main road that leads through the center of town. A few hundred meters away, the police and army slept at the barracks near the secondary school while I waited for my shift to be over. Another hour, and I could go back and prepare for the morning session. I crossed my arms, rested the butt of my rifle on the ground, and leaned against a post to try to maybe sleep a little while no one could see me. Just as I closed my eyes, I heard a loud whistling. I looked up, and something fell from the sky and exploded a hundred meters away with a large explosion that shook the earth. I dropped to my hands and knees as other bombs came and crashed in the same way.
During a brief pause in the shelling, I suddenly began to hear the sounds of pounding feet. I looked in the opposite direction of where the bombs struck, and I saw the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge. Hundreds of them were running down the road dressed in their Chinese made green drab uniforms. Their heads were wrapped in red bandannas, their feet protected by sandals, and their waists were clothed in ammunition. I could see them coming, but they could not see me in the darkness. I acted quickly and jumped into a muddy canal that was by the side of the road next to me. In the dark, I threw off my ammunition, grenades, and pitched my rifle into the black water. I did not dare fight the Khmer Rouge, for I knew that I would be killed if I did. I was a teacher, not a soldier. I didn’t sign up for this.
I could hear the pounding feet running by me as I breathed heavily among the reeds and muck of my watery hiding place. My head was just above the water, but despite my efforts to hide myself I still feared that the Khmer Rouge would see me. When the pounding of feet passed near me, I felt fear in the pit of my stomach. I was not a Christian man then, but if I were I would have offered God anything He wanted if He kept me alive that night.
As soon as the soldiers passed my hiding place, I began to hear gunfire. The Khmer Rouge were fighting with the soldiers near the school, but from where I was I could not see them. Slowly and carefully as to not make a sound, I crept on my belly like a snake from my hiding place through the mud to see what was going on. As soon as I reached the road, I saw that the Khmer Rouge had almost completely overrun the soldiers and police stationed at the barracks. The government soldiers were retreating, firing their guns sporadically as they went. These men constantly bullied the civilians in the town, but when it came down to actually fighting all of their bravado was stripped from them. When the shooting finally stopped, I walked slowly back to my house. I went up to the second floor, took off my wet and muddy clothes, and hid under my bed. However, the terror of the night was not yet over.
When the Khmer Rouge had taken all that they wanted from the barracks, they turned on the town. They looted everything that they could find, and I could hear them breaking down doors and smashing windows outside. One soldier came into my house, and stole my dishes. When his footsteps could be heard inside the house, I froze. The sound made it its way into my living room, and having not found anything of value in there the footsteps made their way into my kitchen. I could hear the clatter of my dishes as he dumped them into his crudely stitched sack and began to head for the door. In my misery and desperation, I decided to follow him to beg for my things back. Today, I do not know why I did this, as I could have stayed hidden where I was. I felt that it was the least I could do to protect what little I had.
I came downstairs with only a kromah wrapped around my waist, and followed the man as he left. A few steps out the front door, the soldier noticed that he was being followed. He turned around to face me with one hand holding his rifle, and the other carrying his stolen goods. The man looked like one who was deprived of even the simple comforts of life. His naked feet looked bruised and worn, and his dark and sun scorched face contrasted sharply with the red bandanna tied around his head. The green army clothes he wore were dirty and covered with mud around the ankles. He could have smelled awful as well, but I did not dare get close enough to him to tell if he did or not.
When the man looked at me with hardened eyes and a scowl, I put my hands together and pleaded with him to not take my dishes. I said that I was simple person without a lot of money. He dropped his sack and grinned, revealing a sinister smile of white broken teeth. He raised his rifle and asked me, “Why do you follow me?” and fired the gun several times. A spray of bullets struck the earth around my feet, and I thought for a moment that he would raise it and shoot me in the chest. However, he simply laughed and walked off to rejoin his comrades. I dropped to my knees in shock of what happened, and watched the Khmer Rouge wreak havoc in the town. Some of them simply robbed houses, but others did more damage. One smashed open a jewel case, and helped himself to as many watches as he liked. I retreated back to my hiding place soon after I was shot at, and the Khmer Rouge soon after retreated to theirs. The sun was coming up soon, and they knew that they were not safe in broad daylight from the government planes.
I did not go to school that day. I helped my friends and neighbors pick up the pieces of what had just happened. We knew that the Khmer Rouge would come again, but for the time being we could calm ourselves enough to avoid going mad with fright.
No one slept well the next night. No one who lived through what we did would have.
The Ubiquitous Subject of Rice
In the western world, bread is a staple food that is eaten by many at all hours of the day. The same could be said of rice for those living in the Orient, but the fact of the matter is that this stuff is so much more. For Cambodians, it literally is food. The word for rice in Khmer is bai, and it is used to mean both rice and any other type of food. When one Cambodian says to another “Neeyam bai,” the phrase literally translates as “Let us eat rice.” The phrase implies the words “Let’s eat our meal,” but the use of the word for rice in daily conversation certainly suggests its immense importance in Cambodian culture.
Rice is served with almost every single meal, with the exception of sometimes breakfast, and it is the central part of the repast. I can recount what I have eaten today on October 10th, 2008 of what this means. This morning I arrived at the breakfast stand in front of my house to eat a meal of bo boah. The lady who works there served me a bowl of watery rice porridge with some wild onions, garlic, and pieces of chicken that floated near the top of it. After adding a few drops of chili sauce for an extra punch of flavor, I swirled the mixture before eating it with a single spoon. At lunch, the family I lived with served me sñou tralop tah goo an with kong kaip and rice. The two former dishes were a stew of green beans and sprouts, and a plate of boiled frogs. Some who read this may balk at the notion of eating frogs, and I assure that it was no different for me the first time. I have learned, however, to follow the advice of what my former Khmer teacher told me about eating strange new food in Cambodia. He said to me once, “Adrian, don’t look. Just eat,” and I have never thought otherwise since then. Dinner that evening was a meal of rice and a curry stew with pork. Sometimes I have noodles at breakfast, but for the most part my diet consists of having rice at meals three times a day.
One would think that I would be tired of eating it by now, but my attitude is the exact opposite of this. By the end of my first two weeks here, I was sick of eating rice. Now, I am hooked on the white stuff. If I do not get my rice sometimes in the morning, I quickly become very cranky. My stomach and digestive system have adapted themselves very well to this diet, for which I am very proud of them, but I have noticed that they cannot handle western food as well as they used to. Several slices of pizza and glasses of beer is not a familiar site for them anymore, and sometimes this means trouble. This quick and troublesome change in diet is almost proof enough to demonstrate that rice is an all-important substance in Cambodian cuisine.
At the same time, it is so much more important that this. I have written here already about the ocean of green rice fields that surrounds the town of Anchor, but I have yet to touch on the people who work there. Riding my bicycle through this expanse, I can see men and women who have toiled their entire lives in the fields. The young men are usually shirtless, lean, muscled, and have the darkest of skin and hair of anyone in this country. They sometimes smile and shout “Hello!” as I ride by, and their smile reveals a gallery of white teeth. The young women usually have their heads wrapped in a long scarf and a straw hat, and have a haggard and sun worn face. They stare at me, and do not smile. The older people are almost indistinguishable from each other. Rail thin and white haired, they sometimes laugh crazily or stare in amazement at the spectacle before their eyes. Their entire life has been spent working hard in the fields to feed the people of Cambodia, and there is no telling what they remember from the days when the country was at war. It is they who I think of when my bowl is filled with rice everyday.
Rice is also a frequent topic of conversation. Whether it is used as an offering for the monks, one’s dead ancestors, or for everyday consumption, the supply of rice is talked about frequently. The grandfather of my host family, who works for an agricultural NGO in the area, has told me that there has not been enough rain this year for a good harvest in the dry season. With rising food prices in the world, this is not good news for Cambodia. ABC radio, which broadcasts from Australia, has reported that the consumption of dog meat has increased over the last couple of months. I have yet to see this myself, but I would not be surprised if some of the people out in the country were eating it as a source of protein.
I am curious to see how this will affect my diet. I have every confidence that I will be able to eat enough to sustain my health over the next two years, but there might be less of the food I eat for everyone around me.
Rice is served with almost every single meal, with the exception of sometimes breakfast, and it is the central part of the repast. I can recount what I have eaten today on October 10th, 2008 of what this means. This morning I arrived at the breakfast stand in front of my house to eat a meal of bo boah. The lady who works there served me a bowl of watery rice porridge with some wild onions, garlic, and pieces of chicken that floated near the top of it. After adding a few drops of chili sauce for an extra punch of flavor, I swirled the mixture before eating it with a single spoon. At lunch, the family I lived with served me sñou tralop tah goo an with kong kaip and rice. The two former dishes were a stew of green beans and sprouts, and a plate of boiled frogs. Some who read this may balk at the notion of eating frogs, and I assure that it was no different for me the first time. I have learned, however, to follow the advice of what my former Khmer teacher told me about eating strange new food in Cambodia. He said to me once, “Adrian, don’t look. Just eat,” and I have never thought otherwise since then. Dinner that evening was a meal of rice and a curry stew with pork. Sometimes I have noodles at breakfast, but for the most part my diet consists of having rice at meals three times a day.
One would think that I would be tired of eating it by now, but my attitude is the exact opposite of this. By the end of my first two weeks here, I was sick of eating rice. Now, I am hooked on the white stuff. If I do not get my rice sometimes in the morning, I quickly become very cranky. My stomach and digestive system have adapted themselves very well to this diet, for which I am very proud of them, but I have noticed that they cannot handle western food as well as they used to. Several slices of pizza and glasses of beer is not a familiar site for them anymore, and sometimes this means trouble. This quick and troublesome change in diet is almost proof enough to demonstrate that rice is an all-important substance in Cambodian cuisine.
At the same time, it is so much more important that this. I have written here already about the ocean of green rice fields that surrounds the town of Anchor, but I have yet to touch on the people who work there. Riding my bicycle through this expanse, I can see men and women who have toiled their entire lives in the fields. The young men are usually shirtless, lean, muscled, and have the darkest of skin and hair of anyone in this country. They sometimes smile and shout “Hello!” as I ride by, and their smile reveals a gallery of white teeth. The young women usually have their heads wrapped in a long scarf and a straw hat, and have a haggard and sun worn face. They stare at me, and do not smile. The older people are almost indistinguishable from each other. Rail thin and white haired, they sometimes laugh crazily or stare in amazement at the spectacle before their eyes. Their entire life has been spent working hard in the fields to feed the people of Cambodia, and there is no telling what they remember from the days when the country was at war. It is they who I think of when my bowl is filled with rice everyday.
Rice is also a frequent topic of conversation. Whether it is used as an offering for the monks, one’s dead ancestors, or for everyday consumption, the supply of rice is talked about frequently. The grandfather of my host family, who works for an agricultural NGO in the area, has told me that there has not been enough rain this year for a good harvest in the dry season. With rising food prices in the world, this is not good news for Cambodia. ABC radio, which broadcasts from Australia, has reported that the consumption of dog meat has increased over the last couple of months. I have yet to see this myself, but I would not be surprised if some of the people out in the country were eating it as a source of protein.
I am curious to see how this will affect my diet. I have every confidence that I will be able to eat enough to sustain my health over the next two years, but there might be less of the food I eat for everyone around me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
