Out There

Some years ago, I was granted the opportunity to have an internship with a cultural foundation in Fez, Morocco. When I was not working this organization, which was frequent during the end of the summer months, I took the liberty of taking trips to various sites around the country. On such occasion, I visited the Berber town of Azrou in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. During an extended weekend there, I went walking into the hills and mountains surrounding the town. One day after discovering a goat path that led to the top of a mountain, I stumbled a vista overlooking the countryside below me. At this moment, I felt the sensation that I was truly out there. The bold sense of adventure felt like I was standing on the edge of the world and looking down at all that I had traversed. I was miles away from the nearest human being, hundreds of miles from the crowded city of Fez, and thousands of miles from my own home in America. This was the farthest that I had ever gone. There was a certain sense of elation as I climbed down from that mountain that afternoon, but it was short lived. I dined alone later that night a little café near the town square, and the want of companionship filled me with such a melancholy temper that it nearly erased the accomplishments of the day. Groups of tourists sat near me, and I would have given anything to join their conversation.

This is not the first time such a thing has happened. The sensation of being out there and the subsequent reactions to it has repeated itself many times for me in my life. From the cold and snowy streets of Bratislava, to the heated grasslands of South Africa, to the rice fields of Cambodia, it has followed me everywhere I have traveled. Such an anecdote about my travels in Morocco could be applied to the present Peace Corps experience in Cambodia. There are certain days when I ride my bicycle out into the rice fields that surround the town to gain some moments of peace and quiet. I often pause in the middle of a long stretch of road, look at my surroundings and reflect on how far I have come from my former life.

A few months ago, I was finishing a thesis, taking final exams, hanging out in dorm rooms, and graduating from college. It seems so long ago, but time is such a relative thing in the mind of the beholder. I keep trying to imagine what Americans are doing at the present moment, but I cannot seem to really get a clear picture in my head. I think of my house, family, and the last time I took a red blooded American gal out on a date. The memories are as real as they can be, and I try to hold onto them as much as I can for fear of them slipping away from me.

I sometimes cannot even believe myself how exotic my life has become in this world of being out there. A day’s worth of routine involves watching dark young children climb coconut trees with machetes, seeing four to six people placed on the back of a motorcycle, and fearing the pinch of a mosquito bite as possibly the first step towards the horrible condition of either dengue fever or malaria. I watch families ride their huge, black water buffalos through deep canals to their floating houses, babies running around naked and urinating where they please, and mangy dogs fighting with each other to the amusement of onlookers. I know that if I am ill I have to hydrate myself by drinking as much coconut juice as possible, and that if I stop by the side of the road I cannot go too far into the bush because I might step on a land mine. I have the best excuses for telling someone that I have no interest in marrying a Khmer girl, and that if I leave my house on a Cambodian holiday I might run into packs of drunken Cambodian men. I could go on, but the list goes on and on. If I spend too much thinking about it I might go stark raving mad, and I pray that that will not happen. Dealing with it, I suppose, is a peculiar consequence of being out there.

But where does this feeling come from? There are several factors that contribute to this. The geographic location of where I am to spend almost two years of my life has to do with this greatly. If you follow the road from Siem Reap some sixteen kilometers northeast and go north for another thirty-four kilometers, you will find the district of Anchor. The dirt road leading there is lined with canals that irrigate the surrounding rice fields, and it travels more or less in a straight line that creates something resembling an isthmus. Patches of jungle appear along the road, but it is mostly an agricultural scene that rises up before you. Dark brown children submerged up to their necks in water can be seen fishing with nets in the canals that run alongside the roads. Wooden houses built on stilts and with straw roofs appear sporadically by themselves or in hamlets on either side your vehicle. At last, in the middle of a green ocean lies the island of Anchor. A paved road runs through it, and small one or two story houses are built on either side of this main street. About a hundred meters beyond the road on either side, the rice fields begin again. There is nothing like walking or biking in any direction away from the town, and seeing that there is nothing but rice fields in every direction. The nearest volunteer is more than thirty kilometers away.

Accompanied by this feeling of geographical isolation are the feelings of loneliness due to cultural and linguistic separation. For the latter, the language barrier can be quite a crushing weight upon the whole experience of being in Cambodia. I know enough Khmer to communicate requests and ideas in a very simple conversation format, and it has quickly improved during the short time that I have been here. I make it a point to study it every day because I believe that it is necessary for my survival in the long-term. However, the full and in depth conversations that I used to have with the other volunteers are simply not there anymore. I do appreciate the desire to practice English when people approach me in order to practice their English, but it really gets old after a while when you have to answer the same questions over and over again. When speaking to you, they usually have this expression on their face as if they are an actor trying to remember the lines of a script they memorized years ago. The people I am growing closest to are those who can speak one of the two languages that I know well. It is that simple.

When school is not in session, boredom can come easily. Depression follows quickly in its wake. I am fortunate that I came into the Peace Corps with an already honed sense of what I can do to keep myself active. For me, I write both these blog posts and several stories of fiction, read French novels, practice the violin, and study both written and oral Khmer. Reading and writing Khmer is about as hard as trying to decipher hieroglyphics having just discovered the Rosetta stone. I have recently found a person willing to tutor me in Khmer in exchange for lessons in English, which is very fortunate. I hope that after some time I will be able to overcome the handicap of not being read in this country.

I know that I can make this situation work, but it is going to take some time and incredible amount of patience that I am going to have to develop over the years. Peace Corps was never advertised as something that was easily doable, but you do not fully realize it until you get out here. Out there. I hope that in writing these things down and posting them on the internet for all the world to see will help explain this feeling, and what I have been through in my time here. It is my wish that someone who reads this will better understand what I have been through, and not look at me as a foreign creature.