"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.