2009

An entire year spent within the confines of Mother Asia.

The Teachers

Most of the teachers whom I know live in dormitories. The women live in an empty classroom in the new building, and the men live in a small house behind the school offices. I never ever visit the women’s house, but I do frequently drop in to visit the guys. Their rooms are small, with maybe five or six beds in them, and they only have one bathroom. A makeshift open-air kitchen is in the back of the house, with pots and pans strewn about on a chipped wooden table. Under one of their large concrete water containers, a bitch nurses a litter of puppies and barks whenever anyone comes near. The absence of women in this house is evident simply by the pinup posters on the wall and an overall messiness.

The men who live here come from far away places and are usually bachelors in their mid to late twenties. For many of them, this position was the only teaching job available when they graduated from the teacher training center. They share the same misgivings that I often feel about the students: They do not want to study, they do very badly on their test scores, etc. However, they understand the situation completely. One teacher told me the other day, "Jo ree-un at baan twuh kah." (Studying will not help you find a job here)

When they are not teaching, they do what most young men do when they have no girlfriends, wives, or family to supervise them: they play games and they drink. Volleyball, soccer, and alcohol are obviously more fun than working, and there is little to stop them from abandoning their responsibilities. I cannot count the number of times I have popped into that house after lunch and found my fellow teachers drunk, grinning, and falling over themselves. Remarkably, many of them still have the courage to get up and walk to class in their inebriated state. There is one teacher who seems to drink and smoke much more than the rest of them, and I keep telling him that he if keeps that up he will be dead in twenty years. He laughs when I tell him that, even though he looks ten years older than he already is. I would complain, but the directors of the school are often times the ones sitting around that table, and the ones supplying the beer. So I sigh, and have to start thinking about ways in which I can teach the class by myself.

Only once did I ever really get mad at another teacher for drinking. My co-teacher decided one night after a party that it would be a good idea to drive his moto at high speed down the road with another teacher on the back without a helmet on. As you can imagine, an accident occurred. Fortunately for him, he survived with only a few scrapes and bruises. However, this did not save him from the verbal lashing I gave him when I found out what had happened. I was pretty mad, and that is putting it lightly. It was an incredibly idiotic thing to do, and I told him so. He merely smiled, and said that maybe he would be more careful. The sad part is that I am probably the only one who told him all this, and he would probably do the same thing again if given the chance. Fatalism and alcoholism are really tough habits to break.

Obviously this kind of self-destructive behavior is not healthy, and I cannot see the male teachers at the school being able to keep up this lifestyle for very long. Either they need to move back home to their families or get married and settle down in Angkor Chum. Otherwise, they will succumb to the average life expectancy of Cambodia: 55.

Ever Wondered Where Your Rice Comes From?

Thanksgiving 2009

A buddy of mine recently moved into a huge house in a town really close to the Thai border, so he invited a whole bunch of people over. There was a mix of Peace Corps people as well as VSO (The British equivalent of Peace Corps. They're cool, but paid twice as much, get to ride motos, and have translators so they don't have to learn the language) volunteers from England and Australia. We had a pretty good time explaining what Thanksgiving is to them. We didn't have a turkey, but we had two chickens, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Someone's mother just visited, I think Kelsey's, from America and brought a whole bunch of ingredients with her, which was awfully nice. We also chipped in a dollar a piece to buy a bottle of jack daniels, and spent the whole day cooking, eating, drinking, playing trivia games, and two games of RISK. Just like my home in America, the men were kicked out of the kitchen for the most of the day before the meal because we have a habit of eating things early.

Through The Ring Of Fire

There is a man who I see quite often in Siem Reap. He wears a dour expression on his face, and no shirt. His grey pants are rather dirty and worn, and he pulls a cart behind him by hand. Even during the heat of the noonday sun he does this, and a loudspeaker powered by a car battery announces his presence. One song is repeated over and over again through the piercing monotone it produces through the plastic cone. At certain intervals he stops, takes his equipment of the cart, and sets up his show. Sometimes it is in front of the tourist restaurants on Pub Street. Out of the cart comes a large metal hoop attached to a wire frame stand. Rusty kitchen knives, about the size you would use to cut tomatoes , are attached to the ring pointed inwards. Some are bent and twisted outwards. When I first saw him, I thought he was selling knives or sharpening them. However, I could not understand why anyone would want to buy these blackened, dull knives he had. Then I realized he was not selling them. The man places it delicately on the ground, making sure it does not tip over. Finally, he takes a bottle of lighter fluid and douses the whole thing before lighting it on fire.

Is he really going to do what I think he is going to do? Surely he is mad! The man’s expression does not change as he steadies himself before the ring. The muscles on his stomach tense and become rigid (an involuntary reaction). In one quick movement he is in the air, through the hoop, and standing back on the ground again. He does this trick three or four times. The policeman and the waiters nearby cheer him on while the tourists watch with open mouths. The people who know him have watched this feat done a hundred times. The man's technique is absolutely flawless. He is a machine. Sometimes people give him money. Other times he does his trick in front of no one. I have seen him do it in both situations. The face is the same, the jump is the same. There is virtually no change.

I cannot imagine what drove him to this line of work in the first place, but it must have been terrible. And this is a place where many terrible things happened.

The Students

I imagine it would very hard to be a student in Angkor Chum. It is not difficult to speculate why. Pretend for a moment that you come from a family who has only known the backbreaking work of farming rice. You share a wooden house with your mother, father, and siblings, sleeping on a straw mat every night. The clothes on your back are the ones you wear almost every day. Perhaps you own a few cows, enough to raise and sell in the market when the time is right. Your parents have never been to school, and no adult around you understands the value of an education. They believe in what people call “old ideas.” They think you would be better off working in the fields and helping them make a living instead of going to school. However, everyone goes to school because the village chief says you must. You feel you ought to go because all of your friends are there, but like your parents you do not understand why it is you have to go. The teachers come from far away places with names like Phnom Penh, Kampong Cham, and Sviey Reing. They give lectures, but you want to talk to your friends instead of actively listening and taking notes. You chat with the other students in the class, and doodle in your notebook. The teacher seems bored, and does not seem to mind that no one is paying attention. There is no punishment for not doing what you are supposed to. Sometimes the teacher does not show up for days, and time is spent playing games with the other students. The future is unknown to you. You do not worry about what is going to happen to you when you leave school because it is not important. So when the American teacher asks you about post-graduation plans, you do not have an answer for him.

Of course, there is an exception to every rule. There are a few students who seem to recognize the value of education and work hard in their studies. These are the students who I mostly work with and help me in other projects such as the Guppy Farm and other things. But they are rare. Part of the problem is that they have very little to aspire to. If you take a look at the town, there are very few job opportunities for a person with an education. The professional jobs are taken by people who come from far away, which itself is a statement about the Cambodian economy. Think about it. If highly qualified people are willing to move from places like Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, or Sisophon to take posts in a remote outpost such as Angkor Chum, what chance does a student coming from a rural area have in getting such positions? Very little.

From conversations I have had with some of the students, it seems that many of them want to leave to find opportunities elsewhere. I cannot say I blame them. If I came from this town, there would not be a day that went by where I did not dream of escaping to other places. I often thought of trying to help them do this in some other capacity than improving their English abilities, which to be completely honest has never really taken with them. This sounds very disappointing, but I have learned to accept it. Considering the history of the town and its isolation from the outside world, it is no wonder that most students are reluctant to learn. I think I would have a very similar experience if I tried to teach Chinese to students in rural Idaho, and constantly trying to sell them on the idea that it was useful language to know. (The real triumph has been my counterpart, who has learned to imitate the creativity I bring to lesson planning. That's the real success of the TEFL mission here) Since English is not something that I can sell them on, the most I can do is say, “Take your education and do something with it.”

It is going to take a very long time for this part of Cambodia to develop. While other volunteers tell me how they are reading advanced English books with their students, or conducting career workshops, I am happy simply at the fact that my students are even going to school. Soon it will be 2010, and still it will only have been thirteen years since the war ended in this part of the country. Students are going to school, instead of fleeing the shells that came from the sky or the soldiers who burned their villages down.

Things could be a lot worse here, but they also could be a lot better. I recently received a shipment of books from a company in America named Darien Books. I wrote them a nice letter asking for books for my library, and they just arrived. I will use them as much as I can, but I am hoping that when the town develops a little more and education becomes more accepted in the community that the students will come to use them more.

Maybe someday.

Never Do Business With A Monk

I learned that the hard way.

This all started when I came up with the idea of showing a few movies to the students in Angkor Chum. I had at least two DVD’s that I wanted to present. One was a Khmer soap opera about AIDS named “Palace of Dreams,” and the other was film about contemporary Cambodian society called “Les Gens de la Rizière” (The Rice Farmers). The Peace Corps gave all the volunteers a copy of the first film back in February during our mid-service training session. Their expressed interest in giving us a free copy was that we show it to everyone in the community. I took it back with me to site, and made a few inquiries about borrowing a TV or a projector so that I could present it to a large number of people. Nothing seemed promising, so I put the idea aside for a while and focused on other things. Over the summer, I thought about presenting “Palace of Dreams” with perhaps a few other Khmer movies for the enjoyment of the school and the community. World AIDS Day was coming up in December, which gave me all the more reason to make this happen. I included it in the speech I made to the student body at the beginning of the year, and set about obtaining the means to present the films.

However, getting someone to lend me any amount of equipment proved impossible. Other volunteers had told me that they had been able to show the movie through borrowing a TV or a projector from people in the community. Despite having a pretty good relationship with some of the other NGO’s in town, my efforts to obtain what I needed were fruitless. The problem is that TV’s and projectors happen to be worth hundreds of dollars, and no one is willing to let them out of their sight for fear of losing them. I cannot say I really blame them given my recent experience with the guppy farm. If people are going to steal something as small and as useful as a mosquito eating fish for their own entertainment, there is no limit to what they are capable of.

Distraught, I sought advice from the other teachers at the school. They mentioned that the local wat sometimes presents movies, and that I should go and talk to the abbot there. This made me a little nervous. When I first the met the abbot of Wat Char Chuk, I sat before him on the floor of his office while he smiled and chain smoked a pack of Alain Delon cigarettes. He spoke to me, but I was transfixed by the spectacle happening behind his giant bald head; a giant fish was gnawing viciously at the remains of a dead frog. I nodded politely and said the customary “Bat…” at the right intervals when he made his speech welcoming me to Angkor Chum, but I could not take my eyes off that fish the entire time he was speaking. It had to be a sign, a very bad sign.

Since then, I have made the occasional visit to the wat during festivals or to chat with the monks. When I went to see the abbot about presenting some movies, I was a rarely seen but familiar face there. After greeting each other, I explained what I wanted to do. The abbot sounded enthusiastic, and wanted to show the movies in a little more than a week. While I was glad to have the support, I asked him how much it would cost to rest the projector and the screen. He said that it was cost between thirty and forty dollars, which I thought was okay. I said that I would try and fund-raise for a week in the community and see what I could come up with, and we left it at that.

The next week I was at school when the abbot summoned me to the wat. A twelve-year-old boy on a motorcycle rolled up to the window of the school offices where I was working and said I had to go see the abbot immediately. Unsure of why this was happening, I made my counterpart, Mr. Nou, come with me so I would have an ally there. It was almost like making a friend go with you to the principal’s office to vouch for you. Both of us went to the wat and the found the abbot sitting on wooden platform underneath the shade of an enormous gnarled tree. We greeted him and sat with our legs tucked under ourselves for almost five minutes before he spoke to us.

The abbot was in the middle of giving a series of injections to a number of small of birds in his collection. I was not sure what the medicine was, but there was white liquid in the syringe that resembled the empty can of sterilized milk on the ground. The abbot pulled a packet of cigarettes from within his orange robes, lit one, puffed on it for a few moments, and said that he wanted $120 from me. Otherwise, the movie would not go forward. I asked him why the price was so high. He gave me a five-minute explanation that basically amounted to “things came up.” The entire time he spoke, I was trying to remind myself that I was talking to a senior monk, and not a businessman or a mafia figure. Mr. Nou spoke to me in English, which the abbot does not speak, and advised that the abbot was seeking funds to build the new vihira (church) that was still under construction. This was why he was pressing for more money, and doing it with a used-car salesman smile. I smiled back at him, and politely told him that I did not have the money. My counterpart explained to him that I was a volunteer, without any access to the capital he was seeking. The abbot seemed disappointed by this, and he seemed to sink inside his robes a little. I presented a few ways in which we could raise that kind of money for him from the community, but these were all dismissed as soon as I explained them. Frustrated, I started to glance over towards where my bicycle was parked. I think all of us were ready to walk away from the deal if it had not been for one last idea. The abbot suggested that we could use the movies as part of one of the movie nights, but on several conditions:

1. Adrian has to make a sizable donation to the wat. (I offered $25, and this was acceptable)
2. Adrian has to make a speech detailing the importance of the movies to the community. (I agreed, this was not a problem)
3. A photograph of Adrian and the abbot has to taken and shown to people in America so that people will know that supporting Buddhism is a good cause. (A little strange, but okay I guess)

I agreed to all of these terms. Both Mr. Nou and I wanted to set a date for the movie night, but the abbot was against it. He said that he would set something up, and let us know a few days in advance. As a show of good faith, I gave him the movies I wanted to show.

Three weeks have passed since that day. I went to go and see the abbot recently, but he ignored me the entire time I was there. I do not know if the movie will ever happen now. All that effort was essentially for nothing, but at least I know that abbot better.

The Animal Languages

It is impossible to live in rural Cambodia and not hear the language of the animals, developed and learned by humans for countless years for the purpose of speaking to their pets or livestock. Many different styles exist for a variety of animals. When I first started to write about them in my notes, I wondered for a while if these commands were more than just a way to communicate. I asked a bunch of people I knew if communication with the animals was, in some sense, an attempt to communicate with human spirits making their way through the cycle of reincarnation. The reaction was a blank stare, and statements regarding the idea of reincarnation as a "ridiculous idea." Really? Reincarnation is a ridiculous idea in a Buddhist country? Then again, I would strongly disagree with the description of Cambodia as an orthodox Buddhist country. The common religion is rather a kind of nebulous world of good and evil spirits, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Animism all sort of mixed together. Thus, the language of the animals remains purely a pragmatic one.

Recently, I asked a student if he could demonstrate these commands for me so that I could make an audio recording of them. We went through a bunch of them, and he explained to me what each one was for. This first one is a collection of commands for a cow (Come Here, Go Away, Stop and Wait For Me, Stop Eating Grass). Cows are often wandering around everywhere, and it seems logical that there would be a special set of commands in order to get them to do anything. Not that they follow these commands, but it is better than doing nothing. It makes sense that these would be for a cow, since the low, rough timbre of the voice imitates what a cow sounds like.


This next set of commands is for pigs (Go Away, Come and Eat). Pigs are usually kept around the house, so there are not a lot of commands for them except these. At the beginning of the clip you can hear the word "churoo," which means "pig" in Khmer. The staccato style of speaking is reminiscent of snorting grunt as well.




This last one is for dogs (Come and Eat, Stop Barking, Go And Bite Someone!). It is interesting that this last one should exist, although dogs do serve as an intruder alarm. (My apologies for the picture, I have none containing dogs. Please enjoy this scenic view of some rice fields).



I have a few more of some other animals, but these are by far the most interesting.

Beginning of Harvest Season

The Guppy Farm In Pictures

It's going pretty well so far. I learned recently that the original fish I had in the tanks were the so called, "fighting fish" that people use to gamble with. (They place bets on which one will win) I learned this when I came back from water festival in Siem Reap and five of the fish were missing, and presumed stolen. Now I have a different kind of fish that does not fight, is much smaller, and probably does a better job of eating mosquito larvae than the fighting fish. It is called boah pram buhl, or "seven colored fish" because of their colorful tails. I wish I could get a better picture of them, but they move too quickly for the camera to focus. I came back from Puok recently with thirty of them, and it seems like they are multiplying already. Maybe next month we can start selling them off to the community.

The blue netting over the water jars is to prevent leaves and other crud from falling into the water, while letting bugs in for the fish to eat. It kind of looks a little haphazard, but I'm working on a new design right now. I'm also hoping to turn this whole back area into a garden somehow.

Boredom

The subject is difficult to write about. Lingering in the back of my mind, I have spent time thinking about writing something about it. But among the abstract, inchoate thoughts that rise to the surface, the one that clearly doubts the project is always the loudest. Really? You want to write about boredom? How boring! The new arrivals in the province are having a hard with it, and ask questions like, “How on earth have you survived here for more than a year?” that have provoked responses from myself that are bland and meaningless. So I suppose this entry makes up for that.

It is easy to understand what their situation is like. All people in this situation go through a similar experience. It goes something like this: Imagine for a moment that you are an American living in America. Your life is full of appointments, meetings, presentations, dinners, classes, accompanied by a regular seasonal change and surrounded with friends and family. Suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a small Southeast Asian nation surrounded with unfamiliar people and having none of the things that keep you busy. You also find that life moves at a much slower pace. So what do you do? You can throw yourself into your teaching work, but that is often not the best idea. I did that during my first year, and it really left me too exhausted to anything else. (I am doing much more outside the classroom this year, and I am much happier for it) Apart from work, which may be interrupted by unforeseeable events or holidays for weeks at a time, there is not a whole lot you can do. A lot of volunteers read, exercise, and socialize with people in the market in their spare time, which are good ways to unwind. However, these can only keep you busy for so long. You might wonder what Khmer people do for fun, and why I am not out doing what they do. As far as I can tell, entertainment options in the village for the locals include playing cards, gambling, volleyball, gossiping with neighbors, watching TV soap operas, and consuming huge amounts of rice wine or canned beer. (Sometimes starting as early as breakfast) Since I am good at none of those things, my options are very limited. And so I continually face the prospect of boredom on the onset of a long, hot afternoon.

Consider the example of what I did last Saturday. While Saturday is technically a school day, the Peace Corps largely discourages us from teaching on that day. So it is a day off. I rolled out of bed at something like 8:00. (This is the equivalent of something like 10:45 in American time, way too late) I looked at the pile of laundry near the bathroom door, and said to myself, “No…tomorrow.” Took a bath, dressed, unlocked the door and walked outside into the bright sunshine. From the couple of minutes it took to towel off and walk around, I had already started sweating already. Bought two waffles from the breakfast stand in front of the house and walked down the street to the café. Ordered a coffee and sat down with a book for about two hours. I also started to compose this little letter on the back of some paper I recently found behind my bamboo bookshelf. Mr. Breadman came by at 8:45, and I bought my usual loaf of bread from him. We chatted about the weather. At 11:00 I went down to the market to buy some eggs and tomatoes. The eight-year-old girl who sells them to me always screams with laughter every time I come to buy them, for some reason. Went back to the house and made myself a hard boiled egg and tomato sandwich with a little olive oil I brought back from Siem Reap. The host mother laughed as I sat down at the family table with the sandwich, and asked if it tasted good. We have the same exchange nearly every other day. After lunch I pulled out the GRE book and studied math problems. After this, I went to visit the Guppy Farm for an hour, and started off on a long bicycle ride. Came back at 6:00, showered, dressed, ate dinner, practiced the violin, read a book, took another shower, and finally made my way to bed. And that was my entire day off. It really does not get any better than that.

Everyone who comes and lives in this part of the world experiences boredom of some kind. It is mentioned through all the colonial literature you can find. (Conrad, Orwell, and Maugham describe it particularly well. Kipling never mentions it) The mornings are usually okay. If there is no school, you can wake up a little later. You can also visit the market, go out to breakfast, or lesson plan while it is still cool out. However, the after lunch period is particularly dreadful. There is nothing worse than slowly realizing you have nothing to do until the hour when you have to go to bed. The sun is strong, and it takes a strong amount of will power not to roll up in the hammock and sleep the afternoon off. Some people like the siesta, but I find it dreadful. I feel tired for the rest of the day, and so I relegate the worst part of the day to studying the GRE’s.
When you settle into a routine, many of the days seem the same. You retreat into the world of books or pirated DVD’s in order to kill the monotony of life. Every couple of weeks, you escape to the provincial town for a little conversation and western food. But even still with this, there are no plays or concerts to attend, no movie theaters to go to, and while going to a bar or nightclub might sound appealing you can only go to a few that are not packed with bored looking prostitutes. Your only real source of entertainment remains chiefly books and DVD’s.

There is nothing that shows you how much your life now is different from your previous one when you talk to people in America. While you have an infinitive amount of time to sit around and swap yarns, they do not. They are Americans! They have things to do, and people to see instead of listening to, “Well this one time in the village…” over the telephone. And it is incredibly frustrating when you realize that.

So how do you keep your mind from going dull? Anything you can. The new arrivals have only just discovered this, and I wish them luck in the weeks and months to come.

The Kahtin

Recently, I went to a dance performance at Wat Char Chouk. It was held as part of a kahtin, a ceremony where an elderly woman, a yaye, offers gifts to monks at the wat. From what I understand, the whole purpose of it is to seek atonement before one's final hours.

The ceremony began as a parade down the main street of town. The people involved assembled at the far end of town, near where the road forks in two. They carried several litters of bananas, cooking pots, and two small dark Buddhas carved from jade. A band of musicians joined, clashing symbols and playing the trou-u. Some dancers dressed as peacocks, and together with the large band walked down the main road under the hot October sun. And where was I in all this? I was quietly watching the crowd go by when a man carrying a heavy litter loaded with metal pots asked that I take over for him. Naturally, I took the weight of the wooden beam off his shoulders, and marched towards Wat Char Chouk. The sweat streamed down from my face, and I fanned myself vigorously whenever we took a break. When we reached the gates of the wat, we circled the vihira twice before setting the litter down and going inside. The atmosphere inside the vihira was rather pleasant, for the high ceiling of the building allowed the heat to evaporate. The cool tile floor and the cross breeze from the windows was also welcome. The gifts were placed in a line in the center of the room, and the monks sat in standard formation around them facing each other. The abbot sat at the head with his back to the altar, and beckoned me over to his position before the ceremony started. He asked when I was going back to America, and lit a cigarette as he lamented about the high temperature of the day. I went to go sit back down next to a yaye, who was chewing betel nut and spitting it into a metal cup. An electric fan was finally brought for the abbot, and the ceremony began. The recitation of prayers began, and the people responded with murmurs and prostration when appropriate. When it ended, people began to go outside.

In the courtyard outside the vihira, a dancing troupe was assembled in front of a small stone Buddha. I have seen Khmer dancing in the villages and on display for tourists, and I rather prefer the experience in the village. The people know exactly what they are looking at, and they respond to the story lines of the dance with laughs and jeers instead of vacant expressions and camera flashes. And how nice it is to see what entertainment was like before drunken, loud karaoke and cell phones! An orchestra of xylophones, bells, a reed instrument, and singers sat in front of the Buddha and played behind the dancers. My favorite dance that I saw was the courtship between Hanuman and a magie.


A magie, as a co-teacher explained to me, is a sort of mythical princess. I suppose it is similar to a nymph, or some minor god in Greek mythology. She made her appearance in a splendid blue costume, with a pointed golden crown and a crystal ball. Her movements were languid, and she weaved her hands through the air as if caressing the sides of an invisible snake. Suddenly, Hanuman appeared in a red costume with golden epilates pointed upwards and a splendid expression on his monkey mask. Hanuman, as you may know, is the king of monkeys. His grin reveals mischief, and is often portrayed as a trickster. After making his entrance, he made advances towards the magie. It may as well have been Zeus chasing after a nymph of some kind, although Zeus seemed to have much more luck on his side that poor Hanuman, for the magie rejected his propositions. The orchestra played, and a monk fiddled with an electric light on a bamboo pole. Hanuman tried to place the magie under his spell by a series of finger movements that pushed her backwards, but the magie countered this and returned him to his original place. The crowd laughed at Hanuman’s humiliation, and the king of monkeys suddenly became very angry. He removed a small wooden axe from his belt and waved it threateningly in the air. His actions seemed to frighten the poor magie. In order to propitiate him enough to calm him down, she offered Hanuman the crystal ball that she held in her hand throughout the dance. As soon as he touched it, he became very tired. While he lay down on the ground to sleep, the magie made her escape. When Hanuman woke up, the magie was no longer there. With his efforts foiled, he too made an exit and concluded the dance.




With the entertainment now over, the abbot thanked the crowd and the dancers for coming as everyone shuffled off to dinner.

The Guppy Farm

I suppose this all started in early June when I purchased a guppy to live in the water tank of my bathroom. Something needed to be done about the mosquito larvae living and breeding in my bathroom, and I was considering several options about how to get rid of them. Larvacide was supposedly easy to get from the health clinic, but getting the right amount in the water tank was tricky business. Too much was dangerous to one’s health, and too little was ineffective. Putting some netting over the tank to prevent bugs from getting in and out was another thing I could have done, but it would have been really hard to keep it from tearing. Luckily, a PCV in the neighboring Pourk district told me that he found a place that sold guppies. I had read that guppies could be kept in water storage tanks to eat the mosquito larvae that breeds in them, so I went to Pourk one afternoon to purchase one.

The shop was a little ways off the national highway, and was hard to find if you did not know what you were looking for. When I finally found it, I met the owner just as he was finishing lunch. I explained that I looking to purchase a guppy, and he smiled as he told me to wait a few minutes while he finished lunch. He was a rather charming man, with large eyes and a propensity to laugh in a way that seemed almost crazy. His dialect was also rather strange, and I maybe understood half of what he told me. When he finished eating, when we went behind his house into the interior of his shop. The entire place was filled with ceramic water containers, potted plants, vines, makeshift ponds, and glass tanks. He kept over a dozen kinds of fish there, and I watched him as he went around and tended to each of them. Finally he asked what fish I wanted to buy, and I picked out one that was inside an empty glass bottle. After I paid, I said goodbye and jumped in a taxi to go back to Angkor Chum.



When I returned home, I started asking around if anybody knew about the benefits of having a fish live in their water containers. Not surprisingly, very few people knew about them. Then one day as I was puttering around the town, I came up with a brilliant idea for a project. I could start a guppy farm at school! Students would be placed in charge of taking care of the fish, and everyone would learn about the dangers of mosquito born illnesses such as Dengue Fever, Malaria, Japanese Encephalitis, and a whole range of others that are just simply awful. We could then sell the guppies we raise, and distribute them to people in the town. Brilliant!

To do this, however, I need help getting water storage containers to raise the fish in. I pitched the idea to the staff of an agricultural NGO named ADRA, which had a branch office in Angkor Chum. The staff at the office told me to talk to the Siem Reap office, which in turn told me to talk to country director of the whole NGO. It was a classic case of, “Oh, you better talk to my supervisor,” all the way until I got the email address of someone who could take responsibility for a project. I promptly wrote him a very nice letter about what I wanted to do:

[To the Director of ADRA,

My name is Adrian Stover, and I am a United States Peace Corps volunteer currently living in Angkor Chum district, Siem Reap province Cambodia. I am writing to you to discuss a project I am developing at Angkor Chum High School. As part of a dengue and malaria prevention and education program, I am working on developing a “guppy farm” located on the grounds of the school. Guppies are currently being used in many parts of Cambodia to control the mosquito populations that spread malaria and dengue fever. The small fish are placed in water tanks, and eat the mosquito larvae that breed in them. This prevents many mosquitoes from maturing into adults, and reduces the amount of mosquitoes in a certain area. This practice has shown to be very effective. According to the August 2007 issue of Health Messenger magazine, “A recently completed study in Trapeang Kong commune, Kampong Speu province, found that adding a few guppy fish to water storage containers resulted in 80 per cent reduction of mosquitoes in the commune.” If this technique was applied to the community of Angkor Chum, it is possible that the same effects could happen and could cause the rate of dengue fever to go down.

What I propose to do is to procure several water storage containers, some fish food, some guppies, and start a “guppy farm” of sorts at Angkor Chum High School. The high school is an ideal location for such a project because it would allow the students to learn about the project. Selected students would be trained on how to take care of the guppies on a weekly basis, and would continue the project long after I finish my term of service. When enough guppies have bred, the school can sell them to students or community members as a way of paying for the food and making money for the school. There is also a spare bulletin board at the school that could be used to display information about the fish, the project, and the benefits of having guppies in the water tank.

I believe that a “guppy farm” project would be a great venture between Angkor Chum High School, ADRA, and The United States Peace Corps. Thank you very much in consideration for my request. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

-Adrian Stover]

Two weeks went by, and still I heard nothing from ADRA. I was not too distraught because I was working on the World Map project at the time, which was keeping me busy. However, this NGO was one that I really wanted to work with. Through several visits to the ADRA office in Angkor Chum and Siem Reap, I finally tracked down the phone number for the country director. After a few days of trying to get him on the phone, I finally managed to speak to him about the project. He said it sounded very interesting, and said that he would talk to the staff about it.

The following week, I made an appointment to meet with someone who could take charge on the ADRA side. They agreed to donate some concrete water rings, as well as a few posters about Dengue Fever and the dangers of mosquitoes. By the end of the week, I had four concrete water containers in the area behind the school office and some large glossy posters. And so I went about setting up the guppy farm.


The way the current system works is this: There are four water rings in use. Two of them are used for breeding, and the other two are used as a nursery for the baby guppies. The breeding rings contain two female guppies and one male, which invites a snicker from even the oldest person who works at the school. (Maturity levels are non-existent here) When it looks like a female guppy is going to give birth (you can tell by the swelling in her abdomen), she is moved to another ring where she can produce the offspring. After she has given birth, she is moved back to her original ring. The danger in keeping her in the same ring as her offspring lies in the fact that she may be inclined to eat her children. (Nature can be very cruel) Without a system like this in place, the whole purpose of producing guppies would be lost. It took me a little while to figure out what was happening to the baby guppies when they disappeared, but once I figured out what was going on I put this system in place.

Once I figured how a breeding system would work, I recruited six students from one of my English classes to help care for the fish. I held a training session with them during a Thursday afternoon and made a little pamphlet about how to take care of the fish. I explained how the fish needed a bucket of fresh water everyday to replenish their oxygen supply, and we organized a schedule for a different student to do this on each day of the week. One student also volunteered to feed them twice a week.

Right now the students are completely in charge of taking care of the fish, which is exactly what I wanted. Hopefully they will teach others, and this project will continue long after I have left for America. The people at the school have been very supportive of the project, and I think the students really enjoy it. I have posters hung up on the wall near the water rings, so that people interested in learning about the fish can read about them in Khmer. I am also in the middle of building a small garden around the water rings with flowers and gravel walkways. It should be done by the end of the year.

All that’s left for us to do is to figure out how to sell the guppies to people in the community, and for how much. But so far, this is one project I have done that has been more successful than I thought it would be.

The Beginning Of The School Year Speech

This is the speech I made last week when the flood water went down enough for the students to assemble in the front yard of the school. I wrote it in English, gave it to my counterpart to translate into Khmer script, and then spent a week wrapping my tongue around it. It went pretty well, although a student in the front row fainted during the middle of it. He seemed okay afterwords when he was resting in the school office, but maybe he had not eaten for a while. It kind of threw me off for a little bit, but I recovered nicely with a joke that my Khmer accent was too strong. Anyway, here is the speech...in English.

I wish to welcome you back to school! I hope that you study hard this year and become intelligent and useful members of society. I am speaking to you today in Khmer for many reasons. First I wish to thank the students who helped create the world map last month. With their hard work, they helped to create something beautiful that the whole community can be proud of. [Hold For Applause]

I have been in Cambodia for fourteen months. I will leave to go back to America in ten months. I will not return to Cambodia for many years. I want my time in Cambodia to be productive, and I wish to help the people of Angkor Chum as much as possible. Because I have only ten months left, I ask that you help me. Study hard in your English classes, come to the events and classes that I organize, and learn from me as much as possible. Many schools in Cambodia do not have foreign English teachers. You are very lucky! Use this opportunity while you still can, and you will be rewarded with knowledge.

Perhaps you have seen the fish in the concrete rings behind the school office. These fish are part of a mosquito control program. These fish eat mosquito larvae, which live in water containers across Cambodia. If everyone had fish in their water containers in Angkor Chum, there would be fewer mosquitos and less disease like dengue fever. I ask that responsible class monitors from grades 10 and 11 help me take care of the fish. We will feed them, clean their tanks, and sell them to people to put in their water storage containers. When I leave for America, it will be their responsibility to take care of the fish. Together we can defeat the evil mosquitoes and destroy disease! [Applause]

I also ask all students to respect the fish. Do not throw your trash into their homes! Respect them as you would respect your own family.

For students who enjoy learning English, I am going to start a new class this year. It will be in the library, and it will focus on reading books. I have many books from America that I want to share with you, and reading books will help you learn English more than English for Cambodia or New Headway books. It will give you new ideas and knowledge. I once met a Cambodian doctor in Phnom Penh. He told me that he was able to become a doctor because he could read English, and he was able to read many books. If you can read many books, you may become a doctor just like him.

In November, after the water festival, I will also try to present a special Cambodian Film Festival for all students in Angkor Chum. With the help of a local NGO, I will present to you movies about Cambodia. Two will be in Khmer, and one will be in English. They will all be about Cambodia. I ask you to come and watch these movies, and discuss them.

As many of you know, I like to study Khmer. However, my Khmer is not very good and I need help learning it. Peace Corps is going to give me a test in Khmer, and I am afraid I will not pass it if I do not receive help. I am looking for a responsible student to help me learn Khmer. I will need to study written Khmer and spoken Khmer. The Peace Corps will pay a certain amount of money each month to a student, if you are responsible and a good teacher. I cannot teach English to this student during these classes, you must be a good Khmer teacher. If you are interested in becoming my teacher, please find me and tell me.

Again, I hope that you have a successful year, and I look forward to seeing you in class.

Same Same But Different

I suppose that I am due for an update, aren't I? The truth is that there is nothing really to report. The flood water has gone down enough for everyone to get to the classroom buildings, and classes have started. Mr. Nou and I are again meeting ten minutes before the start of every class to discuss what we are going to teach, and the students are learning in the same steady pace. Yesterday in 11B we discussed transportation in Cambodia: pickup-taxi, motorbike, airplane, remork, horse, bicycle, elephant, water buffalo, that sort of thing. I had the students compose a brief essay that answered the questions,"If you could visit any place in Cambodia, where would you go? How would you get there? What would you do there." A student named Sohpaul asked me if he could get to Battambang by lion. I told him this could only happen if the lion was of the flying kind. Sure enough, his essay began, "I would like to visit Battambang to visit friends. I would get there by riding a flying lion." Genius.

The monsoon rains are coming at night now, which means the rainy season will end soon. The rice has grown very high recently with all the rain, and I'm sure some farmers will have a good harvest. The main road down to the national highway has been washed out in some places, making the journey down there more arduous than before. A taxi ride to go anywhere now is similar to that of a bean being shaken around in a tin can, and guess who's the bean? The mere thought of it renders me immobile. Besides, I just received a giant collection of George Bernard Shaw plays from the floating library in Phnom Penh, and I would rather just plow through those.

Life continues on. I continue to teach and work in the school garden on Saturdays and Thursdays. I have a small project there which I will write about once I have a more complete story. I often wonder how people in America are doing at this time of year, but then I have to remind myself that they are more than likely having busy American lives doing who knows what. They cannot probably imagine that this life is far more interesting and exotic than their own. Exotic, yes, but interesting? You have to understand that when the bizarre becomes familiar, it ceases to be bizarre. For example, I am looking forward to enjoying the start of water festival in a few weeks. Surely you have a three day carnival to celebrate the changing direction of a major river in your country, don't you? But then again, your country has infrastructure. That must be terribly exciting to move around in! Trains, buses, mass transit systems, roads not clogged with cows or goats, what a wonderful image.

But then, who exactly is looking at whom?

Surviving Typhoon Ketsana

Cambodia was hit by typhoon Ketsana this week. While this sounds pretty dramatic, the most that I experienced was a lot of rain. The final two months of monsoon bring a lot of rain already to this region, and the typhoon really dropped a lot of water on an already saturated landscape. The result is flooding, and lots of it. My location in Siem Reap caught the edge of it, but Kampong Thom got the brunt of it. A volunteer told me over the phone yesterday that a tree fell on a house near her village and killed nine people. I read in the Phnom Penh Post how a man fell into a hole on the street in Siem Reap town, where they are doing a lot of repair work, and got sucked into a sewage current. He drowned, and now it is my number one fear when I walk down the street there.

When the rains started on Tuesday night, a lot of water suddenly started coming down at around eleven o’clock at night. The tin roof made a dreadful noise from the water pounding on it, and I had to put in earplugs just to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, it was still raining just as hard. No one was on the road, and I could see that my high school was severely flooded. The rain kept coming all day, which was odd. Normally, the monsoon rains come every afternoon and last for maybe an hour. This was different. The radio was dead, and I did not even know that a typhoon had hit us until my parents called me on the cellphone that night worried about the damage it was causing. When the rain was at its lightest, I rode around the main road and surveyed the damage. The rice fields were all flooded, and children were jumping into gushing streams and currents coming from bubbling culverts. The whole atmosphere rather felt like a snowstorm. People mostly stayed indoors, venturing out under raincoats and umbrellas to the market. I went myself and got soaked buying some eggs, tomatoes, onions, an apple and an orange at the market. The ladies working there seemed to be in good spirits about the turn of events, and no one I met seemed to be in an utter state of despair. I went back to my house, cooked the eggs, toasted some bread over the gas stove, and made myself a sandwich. It was certainly a day for staying inside, making tea, and reading.

The next day was supposed to be the first day of school. While classes certainly did not start, a ceremony was held at the primary school under a light drizzle. At the beginning, the students and teachers walked out and paraded down the street carrying blue and white banners. The students had to walk down past the market and back again, but the teachers and I decided to them do that on their own. We ducked into a nearby restaurant and ordered coffee. When the students came back, we assembled and listened to the district chief give a speech about student behavior, studies, and some other things of which I was vaguely aware of.

Nothing much happened for the rest of week. I came to Siem Reap today to use the Internet and get my bicycle repaired, only to find that the Siem Reap river had burst from its banks and was down flowing swiftly down most of the main streets. In some parts, the water is maybe three feet high I just talked to one of the staff at Common Grounds Café, and apparently the dam that is supposed to be holding back all the water is breaking. If it breaks completely, there could be as much as three meters of water that could come into the town. The rice fields I saw on the way in were completely inundated. I even saw from the national road a boat full of people making their across the fields to their houses. I am even drawing up plans myself to lash my laundry bins together into some kind of makeshift raft so I can visit the school office.


We'll see how this plays out.

Travels in Laos

Looking a map of Cambodia, it is easy to identify the major countries that reside across its borders. Vietnam engulfs the entire eastern front, rising up from the gulf of Thailand and ending in the northeastern corridor along the province of Ratanakiri. The border with Thailand is even more massive, stretching from Koh Kong around Banteay Meanchey to the eastern area near Preah Vihear. Both of these countries are key players in the political realm of the region, and their influence upon Cambodia is clearly defined. A majority of manufactured goods in local markets in Cambodia come from Thailand, and a substantial amount of fruit and agricultural products come Vietnam. The occasional tension rises with Thailand, which is referred to in my village as a “country of thieves,” and during the harvest season huge trucks of rice can be seen heading for Vietnam. Given the impact that these two countries have upon Cambodia, one would almost forget that a third country borders Cambodia. Sitting quietly above the border crossing near Stung Treng is the country of Laos.

Landlocked and mostly mountainous, this country of 6.2 million people is diverse in its landscape as it is with its people. Its territory begins in the highlands of the north, and widens from the border with China and Myanmar towards the Plain of Jars and the capital city of Vientiane. It then narrows into a space along the Mekong River sandwiched by Vietnam and Thailand, and is mostly flat along the river’s banks. Although Lowland Lao (Lao Loum) make up seventy percent of the population, there are many different hill-tribes, such as the Hmong, and other minority groups who live in different parts of the country.

Like Cambodia, Laos had a reluctant role during the second Indochinese War, and suffered a bombing campaign that is still taking its toll on civilians today. During the war, the American government dropped nearly two millions tons of bombs on Laos in an effort to destroy elements of the North Vietnamese army and the Pathet Laos. The latter was a communist guerrilla movement that acted in conjunction with the Vietnamese, who later came to power in 1975 in a bloodless coup. As a result of the war, the xenophobic government was heavily dependent on Soviet aid until 1990 when it started to ease diplomatic relations with the west. The country is one of the few remaining communist states in the world, although one would never know it just from being there.

I first thought of traveling to Laos about a year ago. Jason Park, now an RPCV, was telling a bunch of trainees and I about his upcoming plans to visit Laos. He listed a bunch of names of places I had never heard of, and then stated the peculiar phrase, “Laos is going to blow up soon.” There was talk of communism and regional stability in the conversation as well, but for some reason that one phrase put the thought of the northern country in the back of my head. Slowly over the year I began to read more about the country from history books by Milton Osborne, the International Herald Tribune, and an entertaining series of detective novels by Colin Cotteril. So when Anthony called me up in July and asked me if I was interested in traveling to Laos in September, I jumped at the chance.

The plan for the trip was to essentially to go in a big circle around central Indochina. Taking a bus from across the border to the Bangkok airport in Thailand, we were to fly on Air Asia to a city in the north named Chiang Rai. From there, we were to cross the border at Chiang Khong, and take a two-day boat trip down to Luang Pahbang. From there it was onto the Plain of Jars, Vientiane, and then heading back to Phnom Penh via Pakse and Tad Lo in the south. It involved a lot of time sitting on busses and boats, but we figured that a book and the surrounding scenery would be enough to keep us entertained. It was a little grueling at times, but the things that we did largely made up for that.

When we left Siem Reap we got off to a bit of a rough start. Matt and I arranged for a bus to take us to Bangkok, stopping at Sisophon to pick up Dan and Anthony. This was unfortunate mistake, for bus we took was very slow and stopped several times before reaching the border. We arranged the bus through our guesthouse, The Mandalay Inn, but we realized too late that this was an obvious scam. If it took this long to get to the border crossing at Poipet, what guarantee did we have that it would arrive in Bangkok at a reasonable time? The driver could very well have stopped at a guesthouse along the way and claimed Bangkok could not be reached that day because of engine trouble or some other excuse. The guesthouse would also happen to belong to someone in the family. It sounds paranoid and cynical, but it was a real fear of ours. After we crossed the border, we were worried that we might miss our flight. We decided to pay a taxi a hefty sum of money to take us directly to Bangkok airport itself. This was actually not a bad deal, since we would have had to pay a taxi anyway when we got into Bangkok. Despite what people had told me, crossing the border into Thailand was pretty easy. I think coming back is much harder, but fortunately we did not have to do that on this trip. Getting a taxi was a bit of a hassle, but it was probably worth it.

I’ve been to the Bangkok airport a few times now, and every time I go I marvel at its massive size and gleaming white architecture. When we got there, we checked in and made our way to the food court to have an early dinner at the Burger King. It was everything that I imagined it would be and more. From there we flew into Chiang Rai, and stayed at a dingy guesthouse near the bus station. It happened to be my birthday that day, so we went out to an ex-pat bar that night owned by an Englishman dressed in white linen. We were looking over the drink menu under the watchful gaze of some cat-like waitresses when the owner came out suddenly. “Girls! You’ll scare them away!” he called out, and invited us in for a drink. We spent most of the evening around the pool table and the dartboard in the back.

The next day we found a bus going to the border town of Chiang Khong, and boarded it just after the sun came up around six. From the bus station, we crossed through rice fields, hills, and passed giant rock formations that seemed to have just sprung up out of the ground. The air was noticeably cooler. When we got to the bus station on the border, we took a tuk-tuk to the river and crossed the Mekong on a thin wooden boat towards the town on the Laos side named Houyxai. When we passed through customs on the other side, we arranged to take a passenger boat at 11:00 down to Luang Prabang through a local travel agent. We went down to docks for a bit of lunch, and waited for our boat to depart.

It was while waiting for the boat that we had an introduction to the Laotian sandwich. Stuffed with tuna, chicken, ham, vegetables, or all of these ingredients, a sandwich in Laos is a treat not to be missed by the weary traveler. Of course Cambodia has its own version of the lunchtime staple, but the ones in Laos were far more delicious. A lot of it has to do with the bread, which is soft, white, and chewy. This is unlike its crusty, oily, and hardened Cambodian cousin. The reasons for this difference are a mystery, but I would venture a guess that Laotian people use yeast in the production process because the slightly cooler climate allows for it.

The boat we took to Luang Prabang was a small converted cargo ship, which was about six to nine feet wide and perhaps fifty or sixty feet long. A roof covered the wooden deck, and luggage was stored underneath our feet in the hold. The pilot sat at the very front and steered the ship with a wheel that looked like it was out of another age. Passengers sat on wooden seats, concerted car seats, or mats on the floor. A toilet in the cabin near the engine room provided relief, if a little noisy. The further back you went towards the end of the boat, the louder the noise came from the engine. Given this, it was a pretty good idea to come early and get a good seat while you could.

Two days on a boat sounds like an awful bore, but it was actually quite the opposite. We made a few friends with other travelers on board, played cards, looked at the scenery, and read our books while the boat continued on downstream. Among the people we met were Ai, a bearded fellow from Israel with a straw hat and a bamboo walking stick, Réné, a Danish man who had previously come from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and Liz, an American woman who was working in a Burmese refugee camp in Thailand. Liz happened to be from the same city as me, and we talked for a while about and favorite places to eat back home. Réné told me stories about fighting the Taliban. Most of the passengers were foreigners heading to Luang Prabang, but there were a few Laotian travelers scattered here and there amongst the throngs of white faces. There was one local couple that we kept trying to chat with, but it was with limited success. I did notice from glancing at them that they were able to hold hands and display small signs of affection. This would never happen in Cambodia.

From Houyxai, we traveled downstream through the hills towards the town of Pakbeng. The Mekong had a strong current, with bubbling ripples arising from bottom everywhere one looked. At this point of the river, the soil it has collected from its path in the Tibetan plateau turns the water a rusty brown color. The mountains cut up steeply from the riverbanks along the way, and the pilot had to carefully navigate between the rapids and the sharp rocks that stuck up just above the water. The boat stopped here and there to let people off and on, as well as for schoolboys and girls to come on board selling candy, chips, pineapple slices, and the ubiquitous large bottles of Beer Laos from woven baskets. Along certain sections of the river, one could clearly see how slash and burn agriculture had made its mark upon the landscape. Huge patches of land were stripped away from the forest, presumably used for growing crops. Occasionally, someone would shout and point to something they saw on shore. Once we saw a cargo ship loading crates onto the shore with the help of an elephant escort. Another time we saw a backpack circling the drain of a whirlpool, and someone exclaimed that it was “backpacker’s worst nightmare.”

When we reached Pakbeng, it was around five o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was making lines on the water behind us. After unloading our bags, we walked up the hill from the docks and quickly found a guesthouse. The owner was a single mother, and we were happy to stay at her place for the night. There was hot water in a shared bathroom, and a restaurant across the street from where we ate dinner that night.

The next day was cloudy and foggy. Then monks were out collecting alms when we walked out to find breakfast at six thirty that morning, and the woman who ran the guesthouse made us breakfast and sandwiches for the coming day. When our boat left the dock that morning, the clouds shielded the tops of the hills from view and formed a misty barrier between the jungle and us. The river snaked around the hills throughout the day, until at last we reached our destination.

Louang Prabang is one of the most enchanting towns in all of Indochina. Destroyed by Haw invaders in 1887, the city was rebuilt with money from France and labor from Vietnam. The result of all this is a town that resembles a small alpine village tucked away somewhere in Switzerland. European style houses, brick walkways, and iron lampposts dot the streets in Old Luang Prabang, mixed in with Buddhist Wats and UNESCO buildings. From just taking a walk around the area, you can see a lot of really nice old houses. Expensive boutique shops and coffee houses are also abundant along the main streets, with much of the town’s services geared towards the tourist trade. At night, a large Hmong market is set up under tents in the middle of a street. It offers textiles, handbags, old French coins, and other sorts of souvenir items.

While there are a great many restaurants and cafés in Loung Prabang, there are a few that we liked. Saffron is a café facing the Mekong that has good coffee, best if ordered in a French press, as well as good pastries and breakfast items. The café is also part of an NGO, which promotes coffee grown by the Hmong people as a cash crop substitute for opium. The Scandinavian Bakery also offers good breakfasts, and the sandwiches made by people in the market and street vendors are exceptional.

For dinner, our favorite thing to do was to go to a food stall at the far end of the Hmong market. One can purchase grilled fish, chicken, buffalo, or beef on a bamboo stick, and then order a plate of vegetarian food for nearly 5,000 kip (roughly 2,500 riel or $0.75) at a nearby stall. Finding an inexpensive place to eat in Luang Pahbang was a little difficult, but this seemed like a pretty good option.

For two days after our arrival, we walked around the town to see all that we could. Having lived in Cambodia for over year at that point, we strayed far from the tourist sites and saw the local markets and shops to see how they were different from Cambodian ones. Passing by a local high school, I noticed that the student’s uniforms were different. They all wore shoes, and the girls had a kind of striped pattern at the ends of their skirts. Some of the boys we saw had kind of red kerchiefs around their necks. We also visited the royal palace, which was a nice old wooden building from the 19th century. It had some interesting artwork and decoration inside, and included gifts to the king from various governments around the world. These included a table ware set from Charles de Gaulle, a tea set from the USSR, and some moon rocks given by President Nixon. We also found a bowling alley that night that resembled in all aspects one in America. It was fun to play a few games there, even though we were the only ones there.

We also went into the hills a bit to visit the Koung Si falls to cool off a bit. This was probably one of the nicer waterfalls that I have ever seen. The water flowed down from a tall cliff into many different pools along the way into the forest. The water had a kind of turquoise color, and was very cold. One of them had a rope swing suspended from a tree, and we spent a good couple of hours there swinging off of it.

From Louang Prabang, we took a bus over the mountains to the town of Phounsavan. From the many switchbacks and curves that the road took, it was far from a smooth ride. However, the scenery was breathtaking and what a delight it was to see an elevated landscape instead of rice fields for a change. We passed through mountainous towns with houses made from woven strips of wood, and banana tree orchards on green vertical hills. Electrical lines followed us the whole way, and the road was in remarkably good condition. From the tall mountains, we came down into low lying green hills with pine trees and scattered clumps of forest. This was our introduction to the plain of jars.

The eerie thing about Phounsavan is that there are remnants of the American bombing campaign against Laos everywhere you go. When we arrived, we went to the Kong Keo Guesthouse near the old airstrip for dinner. The owner, who is named Kong and uses the word “bollacks” frequently to the amusement of onlookers, helped us organize a tour for the next day, and showed a documentary about the bombing of Laos during the war. It was pretty sad to watch, but also very informative. The documentary showed exactly what a cluster bomb casing looked like, as well as what an individual “bombee” (a small object about the size of a small baseball designed to kill individual people from the air) looked like. When we got up to leave, we noticed that Kong had lit a fire in an elongated boat-shaped object. Then there was the slow realization that this was the casing from a cluster bomb.

The next day we saw more evidence of the war. After a tour of some bomb craters, we passed by villages using bomb remnants for structural supports, and a cave at Thom Piu where several hundred civilians were killed. According to the documentary and local information, the cave was being used as a makeshift hospital. During a bombing run, an American fighter plane fired a rocket into the back of the cave and killed everyone inside. Today, a memorial and an information center sit at the base of the cave. A path leads up to the entrance, and you can go inside. It goes back pretty far. At the entrance, people have piled stones as memorials for the dead. It is an eerie place to visit, to say the least.

Afterwards, we finally got to see one of the jar sites that the Plane of Jars is so famously named after. These large stone jars are scattered across different sites, and mysterious in origin. Although some speculate that they were used as ancient funerary urns, no one quite knows what they were used for. Our best guesses were that they were put there by aliens, that the pitch resonating in them from one’s voice made them ideal for tuning, that they were originally ancient sea sponges, or that they were used to raise guppy fish (my favorite idea). However, they will forever remain a mystery.

After Phounsavan, we made our way down to Vientiane across the mountains and through the town of Vang Vieng. Although, we did not stop there at Vang Vieng the area around there was quite beautiful. The sawtooth-like Mountains rise up sharply from the river that runs through the town, and form knob tops at their summit.

Vientiane was like a smaller version of Phnom Penh, with fewer redeeming qualities. There were the usual tourist restaurants and Mekong river views, but with a prostitute on every corner and a karaoke bar always near, I was pretty disgusted with this place after coming from Luang Prabang. We saw a structure that resembled the L’Arc de Triomphe but more gaudy, as well as the golden pagoda that is one of their national symbols. After seeing a western man take a well dressed male prostitute back to his room, I was pretty happy that I only had to spend one night there.

From Vientiane, we took a night bus to Pakse in the southern tip of Laos. Taking a night bus sounds pretty uncomfortable idea, but it was quite pleasant. Instead of seats, this bus was equipped with bunk beds, pillows, and blankets.

We left Vientiane at eight o’clock that evening and arrived at six in Pakse. From there we found a bus running to Tad Lo, and booked a room that evening in a wooden bungalow. We rode elephants through the jungle that afternoon, and relaxed before the next day.

From there on we trucked onwards to Phnom Penh, with a brief stopover in Stung Treng. The only memorable part was the border crossing. We had read in our guidebook that the border guards in Cambodia would demand a bribe, but would back down if we asked for their name and a receipt. Sure enough, the health quarantine inspector asked us for one dollar each. When I tried to write down his name in my notebook, he grabbed it, threw it at me, and told us to move along.

Then, and only then, did we come back into Cambodia

Mr Breadman

Mr. Breadman comes to Angkor Chum every day from Siem Reap bringing both baguette and sliced sandwich bread with him on the back of his moto (see picture). I used to see him at odd hours during the morning driving past on the road, which caused me to react like a small child running after an ice-cream truck. "Mr Breadman! Wait up!" We finally exchanged phone numbers the other day, and he now calls me every morning asking if I'd like to buy bread. The answer is almost always yes, and we agree to meet at the entrance of the high school for the transaction.

This may not seem like a big deal to you, but I assure you it is. I have bread! Every day I have bread! I used to wait more than two or three weeks at a time to have it. Fortune be praised!

Exotic Plants

An agricultural NGO named ADRA grows plants in the front garden of their office. The one with the green bundles of fruit is a papaya tree, and the other is a dragon fruit plant.

The Jungle Bizarre

I take really long bike trips on the roads less traveled here. Angkor Chum district still has undiscovered parts of it, and I never really quite know what it is that I will find there. The other day, I found the long lost back way into the neighboring Kralanh district. It was horribly rutted, with some of the trenches at least a foot or two deep. The best way to get through was to just find the edges of the road and ride on the top part of the dirt bank that was maybe five inches wide. It seemed that the only way to get through was by bicycle, or by remork with big tires and an axle high off the ground. I passed by one on my way back, and even a machine like this was struggling. After getting through this mess and fording two small rivers, I exited the rice fields for the shade of jungle. A small farming settlement was set up in between the leaves of the palm and banana trees, intermixed with bamboo. There was also a cell phone tower.

I stopped at the crossroads where the road leads down to the main Kralanh town. People occupied the two food and drink shops nearby, and as I stopped some of them approached to take a look at the curious white thing that had just come out of the jungle on a shiny bicycle. A man wearing a kromah and having the skin of a Tamil was the first to speak to me. He had an eagle tattooed across his chest to ward off evil spirits, and his teeth were the color of sugarcane. I asked him where I was, and said that it was the first village in Kralanh town when you come across from Angkor Chum. We went through the usual banter of where I had come from and what I was doing in Cambodia.

There was a sudden commotion at one of the drink shops. Inside one of the wooden huts a boy of sixteen or so was slumped over a large plastic jug, cup in hand. He had had too much of the local brew. His friends tried to move him, but he fell over completely into the mud below. His black t-shirt and ripped jeans were suddenly dirty with mud, which stains your clothes and never comes out no matter how hard you soap scrub them. A friend jumped down from the hut and helped the boy. A grandmother in a loose shirt, sampot, and shaved head appeared out of nowhere to give the boys a good talking to. The friend picked the boy up, but he crumpled like paper and fell down again. He was finally forced to take the arms, sling them over his shoulders, and carry him like a little girl carries a rag doll in the playground. By this point, a crowd had gathered. You could hear their squawking all the way down the road. I asked the tattooed man if the boy was going to be alright. He said he would be just fine, he just had too much to drink.

It was four in the afternoon.

Talking To Foreigners

Where I live, it is generally known that foreigners do not come to this little section of the country. If they do, it is probably work related, or they may have just gotten lost. That being said, it is a big deal whenever I see one and have the opportunity to speak to them (I have spoken to other volunteers about this, and even in larger towns the reaction to barang sightings is the same). Unfortunately, I tend to forget who it is that I am talking to. In western societies, it is generally not acceptable for a person to come up to you and suddenly start asking all sorts of questions like, "Who are you?" "What are you doing here?" "Where did you come from," and "How long are you going to be here for?" However, in Cambodia you can pretty much ask those kinds of questions from anyone you want. Sometimes the results from a Barang encounter can be just a little embarrassing.

This happened to me just the other day: I was sitting down at the café where I usually get coffee when I noticed that there was a Barang woman and a Khmer man sitting at the next table. The man was smoking a cigarette and the woman held her face and was looking away. As I unpacked a novel and a few notebooks from my satchel, I managed to casually ask the man where they were coming from that day. He said that they were coming from Siem Reap, and that they were helping to build a well in the district. The conversation took its course, and I learned that both the man and the woman were both living in London. At this point the woman turned around. She had kind of roundish face with brown curly hair. Unable to restrain my curiosity, I asked her where she was from. "London," she said with a frog in her throat. Halfway through that word I noticed that her eyes were red and puffy, and that she was holding a tissue. There was a slight expression of consternation in the man's face, and I suspected something was awry.

And I had stumbled in on their private matter! How embarrassing! I sat down, ordered a coffee, and opened by books, but the man kept talking to me. Not to be rude, I responded and kept the conversation going. The woman finally walked off to smoke a cigarette (I cannot imagine what the Khmer people thought of her; smoking and crying in public has to be a terrible violation of propriety) and the man and I kept talking. They finally left on a motorcycle, and that was the end of that.

The sad part is that I still have the feeling of wanting to run up to every foreigner I see and ask where they come from. I constantly have to remind myself that while I may be ecstatic to see them, the feeling is more than likely less than mutual. A year on, and I still have that urge...

Welcoming The New Recruits

Last week, I helped with the teaching practicum session of PST. For those of you not familiar with Peace Corps lingo and acronyms, two things require explanation in the previous sentence: one is "practicum" and the other is "PST." Teaching practicum is the period during pre-service training (PST) during which the Peace Corps Trainees (PCT's) hone and refine their skills at teaching English. The week lasts from Monday to Saturday, and the time is divided between teaching by themselves and with a Cambodian counterpart. For some, this is a nerve-racking time. Most people who come into this assignment have very little teaching experience, and the idea of standing in front of a classroom of students is rather terrifying. Even those who have teaching experience find that teaching a class of Cambodians is very different from one full of Americans. Nevertheless, everyone gets through practicum in some shape or another.

The training sessions this year were held in Takeo province, which is south of Phnom Penh about a hundred kilometers or so. Much of Cambodia looks very much the same, and the training villages that we saw looked pretty similar to what we had last year in Kampong Chnang.

This year, my role shifted from being at the front of the classroom to the back. As a "resource volunteer of technical training" (I do love the snappy title) my job was to observe the trainees while they taught and give them feedback on how they did. Most of them did okay. A couple really had to work on their lesson plans, and some still had to find their teaching voice. One group I worked with had a very frustrating experience with their Cambodian teacher, and I felt really bad for them. After the session ended, I explained that at site you have more freedom to work with whoever you want. It seemed like they all got through it okay, although they seemed pretty tired.

The most enjoyable parts of the whole week were mostly when I had the chance to talk about life in Cambodia with the trainees. I felt kind of like a sergeant major telling them about the hardships of a rural site, living in a host family, and surviving two hospitalizations. However, I tried to give them the best advice I could. One thing I kept saying to different people is that you can get a rural site like mine and make it work if you are patient. This did not seem to be much a consolation for them, but I hope they do okay.

Otherwise, it was nice to finally meet some new people in the program. I managed to recruit a few to the writing staff of our newsletter, and wished the rest of them good luck in a successful service. We also got to stay in a guesthouse with hot showers and air conditioning for a week. There was also a contingent of US Marines who were stationed nearby. I think they were building a health clinic or two in Kampong Speu province. I got to talking to some of them one night, and they seemed like pretty friendly people. It was a little funny having that conversation of who you work for though.

"So who are you with?"
"The Peace Corps. You?
"Marine Corps."

They did seem impressed that we could stick it out in this country for two years. They were based out of Okinawa, and we traded some stories about life in the tropics. They told me that the only way to cool off on that little island is to go fishing or snorkeling. It did not seem like too bad of a life.

All in all it was a good week.