This is a "shared taxi." It is essentially a pickup truck that carries both passengers and cargo to a certain destination. It is against Peace Corps policy to ride in the bed, like you see the people here doing, so I usually ride in the cab. It is very cramped, although air conditioned. The driver will also stop frequently to take on or unload whatever he is carrying, so it usually takes a long time to get somewhere even if the distance is not too far.
Friday, March 27, 2009
A Shared Taxi
This is a "shared taxi." It is essentially a pickup truck that carries both passengers and cargo to a certain destination. It is against Peace Corps policy to ride in the bed, like you see the people here doing, so I usually ride in the cab. It is very cramped, although air conditioned. The driver will also stop frequently to take on or unload whatever he is carrying, so it usually takes a long time to get somewhere even if the distance is not too far.
Bicycling In Cambodia
Transportation in Cambodia is really not great, and bicycling for me remains the only way I can get around the country without being at the mercy of someone's driving. It is possible to do, but still difficult. As you can see, the kromah I have wrapped around my face and head protects me from the sun and wind, and a cloth around my mouth and nose can prevent me from breathing dust. I bicycle to and from Siem Reap regularly with this getup, and the 56k ride takes about three and a half hours. When I'm finished, there is a fine layer of red dust that covers my entire body. I regularly have to dodge buffaloes, cows, slow moving bicycles, as well as stay out of the way of cars and trucks going by. Even still, it's good fun and exercise.
Sanity
On certain days of inactivity, when the omnipresent ennui of life seems to have reached a highpoint, I've wondered how long I can stay at my site for any given amount of time. How long can I stay here at any given time, deprived of contact from the outside world? If the goal of the Peace Corps has to do with building capacity through integrating into another culture, how far does this integration go? The answer for me is surprisingly, and disappointingly, simple: three weeks.
I can stay at my site for about three weeks before I start to break down. About a week and a half into the experience, I am generally okay because there are usually enough things to keep me busy. Past this point, I can begin to feel a change in attitude start to wash over me. I'm quietly angry, I feel less and less interested in my work or studies, and start wishing that I were anywhere but here. Little things start to annoy me in ways that they ordinarily should not. By the end of the third week, I am a distraught and miserable wreck of a man. And yet the cure all for this is simply leaving for a night or two, and being able to speak English fluently with someone who understands what kind of situation you are in. When I go back to site, I feel refreshed and ready to do battle with whatever challenge is in front of me.
I can give you an example. I recently spent three weeks at site. I endured the silent meals with the host family, the monotony of always having to eat bowl after bowl of fish soup, frustrations with obstinate students, being overheated all the time and having to treat the symptoms of this all the time, and constantly having to listen to Khmer popular music that the monks blast from huge speakers at the Wat (The purpose of the last one is to let everyone know that the monks are there and ready to collect alms). When it came to the Friday of the third week, I had to leave. I went to Svwai Sisophon, a town north of mine some 40km from the Thai border, with some of the other Peace Corps volunteers. We joined a St. Patrick's Day party that some of the resident British VSO volunteers were putting on. I can't tell you how much fun I had. We cooked and ate a big dinner, made an attempt to learn some Irish dancing steps, and stayed up until three in the morning talking and playing parlor games. It was terrific. All the anxiety of the past weeks simply vanished from my head by the time I went to sleep that night, and I couldn't remember a time when that last happened. The rest of the weekend we hung out together, used the Internet, and absorbed all the news we could get from the TV news stations about the outside world. It was a great weekend, and I came back to site refreshed and ready to teach.
What is interesting about these little trips I take every so often is that while nothing very exciting happens, I cannot imagine getting through two years without them. In the Peace Corps, it seems that there is always this sort of a dichotomy between being at site and doing much work as you possibly can, and leaving site for reasons of mental health or physical. You feel obligated to be at site for the longest possible time, but you know that if you are really upset you won't be able to do much good. A volunteer in a rotten state can do no good for anyone. A lot of us leave and come back on weekend trips because we have to. The longer I stay at site, the more feel like Kurtz, the madman at the end of the river in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
In a very strange way, I’m rather disappointed with myself. Going off into the jungle to do some impossible task appealed to me from the beginning as a way of proving how tough I was. It was a way of proving how I could handle pretty much anything while being devoid of contact from the outside world. On the contrast, being out there has only proven to me how much I need to be with people of my own kind in order to stay sane. After a significant amount of time, it is impossible not to want the most basic of English conversations with another volunteer.
I probably would not have this problem if I had somehow been able to integrate into Khmer culture. Lord knows I have tried, but the harder I try the more difficult it becomes. In watching the Chinese or Korean soap operas that my host family watches for hours on end, I’ve found them boring and tasteless. I dislike going to weddings or parties of any kind because every single man there will give me orders to drain glass after glass of alcohol. From the constant volley’s of hellos, questions about my marital status, and simply being stared and laughed at through most of the day, it is actually kind of a relief that my host family are the coldest, most unfriendly Cambodians I know. The most frustrating thing is that I have a very good understanding as to why Cambodians behave this way. However, it still does not help me get through the day sometimes.
I have a few friends in the town, and I am incredibly grateful for their company and conversation. Most of them seem to realize now though our talks that I come from a very different place than this, which is a big accomplishment (In ordinary conversation, I have a hard time convincing people that France, America, England, and Australia are actually found at different corners of the earth!) The ones who really understand that I think are the ones who are my closest friends because they don’t see me as a barang as maybe others do.
I think I’ll make it through this year, and maybe next year will be better. Perhaps I will need to take little trips less and less, but for now at least I do not know how I could live without them.
I can stay at my site for about three weeks before I start to break down. About a week and a half into the experience, I am generally okay because there are usually enough things to keep me busy. Past this point, I can begin to feel a change in attitude start to wash over me. I'm quietly angry, I feel less and less interested in my work or studies, and start wishing that I were anywhere but here. Little things start to annoy me in ways that they ordinarily should not. By the end of the third week, I am a distraught and miserable wreck of a man. And yet the cure all for this is simply leaving for a night or two, and being able to speak English fluently with someone who understands what kind of situation you are in. When I go back to site, I feel refreshed and ready to do battle with whatever challenge is in front of me.
I can give you an example. I recently spent three weeks at site. I endured the silent meals with the host family, the monotony of always having to eat bowl after bowl of fish soup, frustrations with obstinate students, being overheated all the time and having to treat the symptoms of this all the time, and constantly having to listen to Khmer popular music that the monks blast from huge speakers at the Wat (The purpose of the last one is to let everyone know that the monks are there and ready to collect alms). When it came to the Friday of the third week, I had to leave. I went to Svwai Sisophon, a town north of mine some 40km from the Thai border, with some of the other Peace Corps volunteers. We joined a St. Patrick's Day party that some of the resident British VSO volunteers were putting on. I can't tell you how much fun I had. We cooked and ate a big dinner, made an attempt to learn some Irish dancing steps, and stayed up until three in the morning talking and playing parlor games. It was terrific. All the anxiety of the past weeks simply vanished from my head by the time I went to sleep that night, and I couldn't remember a time when that last happened. The rest of the weekend we hung out together, used the Internet, and absorbed all the news we could get from the TV news stations about the outside world. It was a great weekend, and I came back to site refreshed and ready to teach.
What is interesting about these little trips I take every so often is that while nothing very exciting happens, I cannot imagine getting through two years without them. In the Peace Corps, it seems that there is always this sort of a dichotomy between being at site and doing much work as you possibly can, and leaving site for reasons of mental health or physical. You feel obligated to be at site for the longest possible time, but you know that if you are really upset you won't be able to do much good. A volunteer in a rotten state can do no good for anyone. A lot of us leave and come back on weekend trips because we have to. The longer I stay at site, the more feel like Kurtz, the madman at the end of the river in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
In a very strange way, I’m rather disappointed with myself. Going off into the jungle to do some impossible task appealed to me from the beginning as a way of proving how tough I was. It was a way of proving how I could handle pretty much anything while being devoid of contact from the outside world. On the contrast, being out there has only proven to me how much I need to be with people of my own kind in order to stay sane. After a significant amount of time, it is impossible not to want the most basic of English conversations with another volunteer.
I probably would not have this problem if I had somehow been able to integrate into Khmer culture. Lord knows I have tried, but the harder I try the more difficult it becomes. In watching the Chinese or Korean soap operas that my host family watches for hours on end, I’ve found them boring and tasteless. I dislike going to weddings or parties of any kind because every single man there will give me orders to drain glass after glass of alcohol. From the constant volley’s of hellos, questions about my marital status, and simply being stared and laughed at through most of the day, it is actually kind of a relief that my host family are the coldest, most unfriendly Cambodians I know. The most frustrating thing is that I have a very good understanding as to why Cambodians behave this way. However, it still does not help me get through the day sometimes.
I have a few friends in the town, and I am incredibly grateful for their company and conversation. Most of them seem to realize now though our talks that I come from a very different place than this, which is a big accomplishment (In ordinary conversation, I have a hard time convincing people that France, America, England, and Australia are actually found at different corners of the earth!) The ones who really understand that I think are the ones who are my closest friends because they don’t see me as a barang as maybe others do.
I think I’ll make it through this year, and maybe next year will be better. Perhaps I will need to take little trips less and less, but for now at least I do not know how I could live without them.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Untitled
No one comes to worship at the derelict temple
Priests are long
gone, fluttered out of place and time, stone strewn
tossed about are the building blocks for
the forest mounting victorious triumph at
the summit
Earthen red dancers are here
there
anywhere
hidden somewhere watching rapacious red ant looting
in columns to be seen face up
Nagas broken holding together on the ground pei klat!
Watch no evil sprits but ones that glide seemlessly
Forktongued cousins are always with them
Pity these unbusy monsters
They only frighten me
Priests are long
gone, fluttered out of place and time, stone strewn
tossed about are the building blocks for
the forest mounting victorious triumph at
the summit
Earthen red dancers are here
there
anywhere
hidden somewhere watching rapacious red ant looting
in columns to be seen face up
Nagas broken holding together on the ground pei klat!
Watch no evil sprits but ones that glide seemlessly
Forktongued cousins are always with them
Pity these unbusy monsters
They only frighten me
Monday, March 16, 2009
Favorite Things Said To Me By Cambodians Last Week
"Teacher, when you come to Anchor, you were very fat! Now you look good, like Khmer people."
-Student in 11A
"Right now, your tongue similar Cambodian!"
-Mr. Phon, Language Instructor
"The Cambodian hot season is killing me."
-Me, In Khmer
"Don't die, Adrian."
-Breakfast Stand Manager, Response To Me In Khmer
Mr. Huoy
If I were to describe Mr. Huoy to you briefly, I would choose the adjectives of “short” and “friendly” as ones best suited to someone of his description. His height is indeed of limited stature, being about 5’1,’’ but his smile is one that is perfectly radiant against his dark skin. Mr. Huoy carries himself with his head held high, but for some reason his eyes are always focused on the ground. When he greets me, I continually have the sense that he is thinking about something else. I have never known him to bear any look on his face other than the flat, expressionless one that most Cambodians make, or that famous smile.
Mr. Huoy is the person who I primarily teach with; my “counterpart” if you will. He was born to a family in the town of Pourk during the same year that I was. He has lived in that town for much of his young life, having only visited one province other than his own. He visited Phnom Penh once for a Peace Corps conference lasting several days last month, and I took it upon myself to show him everything that the capitol city had to offer in our free time. We went to the expansive New Market, the Sorya Mall, Independence Monument, and Lucky Market one evening while we both were in town. I laughed when I put him on an escalator in Sorya and his eyes went wide as saucers. He seemed to like the hamburgers and ice cream we had for dinner, but did say that it was very filling. “It’s a good feeling,” I said, knowing how little I feel like that on a regular basis. For some reason, Mr. Huoy was very preoccupied by all of the cell phone stores in Phnom Penh. For a man who had lived in one small town all of his life, it must have been his comfort zone.
After graduating from high school, he went to a teacher training school in Battambang in order to become an English teacher. His family sold some of their land so that he could afford to buy a new motorcycle, making it easier to go back and forth between his home and school. Upon completion of teacher training school, he faced a problem that many young teachers face when they come out of the RTTC. He could have either accepted an assignment in a remote, rural high school far away from his family, or he could bribe someone in the ministry of education to get a better posting. As he did not have the money to do the former, he decided to take a teaching position in Angkor High School at the beginning of this school year. It is there that we met.
It must be hard for Mr. Huoy to live in the town of Anchor. When we teach, he continually complains that he feels tired, hungry, or not motivated enough to go and teach classes. He lives in a dormitory with the other teachers who come from far away, and he goes back to his home every other weekend. He tells me that he misses his family very much, and that he cannot understand why I would want to travel to the other side of the world if it meant that I could not see my family for two years. I tell him that our situations are indeed very hard, but that we both must dao soo (overcome, carry on). I know that the Cambodian government pays Mr. Huoy very little, but I have to wonder whether a general pay increase would increase the motivation of teachers. If they were still put in these kinds of situations, would more money simply erase their misfortune?
Whenever I teach with Mr. Huoy, I never know what exactly is going to happen. I usually come up with a lesson plan and present it to him during the spare minutes we have before class. Even though we have a general plan as to what we are going to do, it does not always go that way. Sometimes little changes happen during the lesson, and I have to improvise off of what he says or does. I have taught with him enough times to anticipate some of these changes, but occasionally I am caught off guard. Even when this happens, I have a pretty good sense of what to do.
Mr. Huoy also plays the troh-ooh, a Cambodian instrument that is a relative of a Chinese one. It is a "spike fiddle," and he plays with a certain degree of skill. Every so often, I go to the school or his house in Pourk to play music with him. I read off of what Cambodian music has been transcribed into western notation, and he plays everything he knows by memory. Lately, I have been keen to play the kim, a sort of dulcimer like instrument, and he thinks that he can find me a teacher.
I do not know how long Mr. Huoy will stay in this town because he will eventually have to find a wife. Once at a teacher’s party, we were discussing the differences between American and Cambodian marriages. When I asked him if he was looking for a wife in Pourk, he replied, “No, I think it is better to find a wife in Anchor. Maybe less expensive.” One has to remember that when two people in Cambodia decide to get married, it is tradition that the family of the groom pays the family of the bride what is known as a bride price. This is essentially a dowry in reverse. While this may seem as a delightful role reversal at first, it has the negative effect of reducing women to products of commerce. This in turn directly affects how marriages are formed, as Mr. Huoy pointed out.
While on the subject of marriages, I should write that Mr. Huoy revealed to me recently that he is rather enamored with a certain student. In America this would be quite disgraceful and unacceptable, but relationships between students and teachers here are more or less accepted. I have been careful to hold my tongue while discussing the matter with him, but I would not feel so uncomfortable if the student didn’t sit in the front row of a class we both teach.
He first told me about this when we were at the aforementioned teacher’s party. The red pungent wine that the local people make from fermented rice was flowing freely, being consumed in a rapacious manner by nearly everyone there, and the musky substance had loosened his tongue. He began in a slurred speech after checking his cell phone for messages. “I think this student is interested in me,” he said. I asked him why, and he said that the student had been sending him messages with questions about the English language. The messages were becoming more and more friendly, which led him to believe that the student was interested in him. I asked him if he was, perchance, interested in the student himself. He said he was. “You know her. She is in 10D,” he said. I asked him if she was the particularly bright one in that class, and he said that she was. “Oh no…” I thought to myself (The affection Mr. Huoy bears for the girl has not affected things in class, but if it does I will have to say something).
Later that month, after we had both returned from Phnom Penh, he told me that he had bought a gold necklace for her in the Sorya Mall. “I feel love for first time,” he told me. No matter how hard I tried to put that phrase into a Cambodian cultural context, I was still perturbed by it. The age difference between the two is not too bad (she is sixteen and he is twenty three), but it still violates that teacher/student separation that I have always known. I have told Mr. Huoy on many occasions that if he were serious about pursuing something with her, he would have to marry her. Given Cambodian custom, this would mean that he would have to move to Anchor permanently, and move into the house of her and her parents. “You would have to live in Anchor for most of your life,” I said to him. Given that he does not particularly like living here, it is something that he will have to think about at some point. To be honest, I cannot truly see him living here with his teenage bride. However, this is for him to decide.
No matter what Mr. Huoy does, I do hope that someday he moves out of that awful dormitory on the edge of the school either because he has found a wife or because he is going home. It will be good for him.
Mr. Huoy is the person who I primarily teach with; my “counterpart” if you will. He was born to a family in the town of Pourk during the same year that I was. He has lived in that town for much of his young life, having only visited one province other than his own. He visited Phnom Penh once for a Peace Corps conference lasting several days last month, and I took it upon myself to show him everything that the capitol city had to offer in our free time. We went to the expansive New Market, the Sorya Mall, Independence Monument, and Lucky Market one evening while we both were in town. I laughed when I put him on an escalator in Sorya and his eyes went wide as saucers. He seemed to like the hamburgers and ice cream we had for dinner, but did say that it was very filling. “It’s a good feeling,” I said, knowing how little I feel like that on a regular basis. For some reason, Mr. Huoy was very preoccupied by all of the cell phone stores in Phnom Penh. For a man who had lived in one small town all of his life, it must have been his comfort zone.
After graduating from high school, he went to a teacher training school in Battambang in order to become an English teacher. His family sold some of their land so that he could afford to buy a new motorcycle, making it easier to go back and forth between his home and school. Upon completion of teacher training school, he faced a problem that many young teachers face when they come out of the RTTC. He could have either accepted an assignment in a remote, rural high school far away from his family, or he could bribe someone in the ministry of education to get a better posting. As he did not have the money to do the former, he decided to take a teaching position in Angkor High School at the beginning of this school year. It is there that we met.
It must be hard for Mr. Huoy to live in the town of Anchor. When we teach, he continually complains that he feels tired, hungry, or not motivated enough to go and teach classes. He lives in a dormitory with the other teachers who come from far away, and he goes back to his home every other weekend. He tells me that he misses his family very much, and that he cannot understand why I would want to travel to the other side of the world if it meant that I could not see my family for two years. I tell him that our situations are indeed very hard, but that we both must dao soo (overcome, carry on). I know that the Cambodian government pays Mr. Huoy very little, but I have to wonder whether a general pay increase would increase the motivation of teachers. If they were still put in these kinds of situations, would more money simply erase their misfortune?
Whenever I teach with Mr. Huoy, I never know what exactly is going to happen. I usually come up with a lesson plan and present it to him during the spare minutes we have before class. Even though we have a general plan as to what we are going to do, it does not always go that way. Sometimes little changes happen during the lesson, and I have to improvise off of what he says or does. I have taught with him enough times to anticipate some of these changes, but occasionally I am caught off guard. Even when this happens, I have a pretty good sense of what to do.
Mr. Huoy also plays the troh-ooh, a Cambodian instrument that is a relative of a Chinese one. It is a "spike fiddle," and he plays with a certain degree of skill. Every so often, I go to the school or his house in Pourk to play music with him. I read off of what Cambodian music has been transcribed into western notation, and he plays everything he knows by memory. Lately, I have been keen to play the kim, a sort of dulcimer like instrument, and he thinks that he can find me a teacher.
I do not know how long Mr. Huoy will stay in this town because he will eventually have to find a wife. Once at a teacher’s party, we were discussing the differences between American and Cambodian marriages. When I asked him if he was looking for a wife in Pourk, he replied, “No, I think it is better to find a wife in Anchor. Maybe less expensive.” One has to remember that when two people in Cambodia decide to get married, it is tradition that the family of the groom pays the family of the bride what is known as a bride price. This is essentially a dowry in reverse. While this may seem as a delightful role reversal at first, it has the negative effect of reducing women to products of commerce. This in turn directly affects how marriages are formed, as Mr. Huoy pointed out.
While on the subject of marriages, I should write that Mr. Huoy revealed to me recently that he is rather enamored with a certain student. In America this would be quite disgraceful and unacceptable, but relationships between students and teachers here are more or less accepted. I have been careful to hold my tongue while discussing the matter with him, but I would not feel so uncomfortable if the student didn’t sit in the front row of a class we both teach.
He first told me about this when we were at the aforementioned teacher’s party. The red pungent wine that the local people make from fermented rice was flowing freely, being consumed in a rapacious manner by nearly everyone there, and the musky substance had loosened his tongue. He began in a slurred speech after checking his cell phone for messages. “I think this student is interested in me,” he said. I asked him why, and he said that the student had been sending him messages with questions about the English language. The messages were becoming more and more friendly, which led him to believe that the student was interested in him. I asked him if he was, perchance, interested in the student himself. He said he was. “You know her. She is in 10D,” he said. I asked him if she was the particularly bright one in that class, and he said that she was. “Oh no…” I thought to myself (The affection Mr. Huoy bears for the girl has not affected things in class, but if it does I will have to say something).
Later that month, after we had both returned from Phnom Penh, he told me that he had bought a gold necklace for her in the Sorya Mall. “I feel love for first time,” he told me. No matter how hard I tried to put that phrase into a Cambodian cultural context, I was still perturbed by it. The age difference between the two is not too bad (she is sixteen and he is twenty three), but it still violates that teacher/student separation that I have always known. I have told Mr. Huoy on many occasions that if he were serious about pursuing something with her, he would have to marry her. Given Cambodian custom, this would mean that he would have to move to Anchor permanently, and move into the house of her and her parents. “You would have to live in Anchor for most of your life,” I said to him. Given that he does not particularly like living here, it is something that he will have to think about at some point. To be honest, I cannot truly see him living here with his teenage bride. However, this is for him to decide.
No matter what Mr. Huoy does, I do hope that someday he moves out of that awful dormitory on the edge of the school either because he has found a wife or because he is going home. It will be good for him.
Monday, March 9, 2009
It Is Very Hot Right Now
Hot season has arrived in Cambodia. For a country that is already warm and humid during most of the year, this is rather bad news. The air these days is coarse, and the sun beats down with such force at midday that it would make you believe perdition was only a few steps away. The canals that once held abundant pools of rainwater are now cracked and dry, and the former green rice fields are yellow. A day’s average temperature is somewhere between 35 and 36 degrees, and the full brunt of the sun can be felt between 11:00 and 1:00 in the afternoon. My house is virtually uninhabitable during the day, for the corrugated steel roof magnifies the intensity of the sun and heats my bedroom to over 37 degrees. In other words, it’s really awful. However, I have come up with a comprehensive list of ways to keep cool.
1. Find a Fan: Worship It and Keep It Happy
I currently have two fans. One is powered by normal electricity, and the other is powered by my car battery + inverter contraption. On nights that I want to use my computer, I sit on the tiled floor of my room and have a fan blow over the two of us. I try to go back and forth between using the two so that I don’t use too much of the family’s electricity. During the day, I go to the school’s office and sit under one of the big ceiling fans there. They are powered by the solar panels on the roof, and I usually try to take a nap under them if I can during the afternoons that I do not have any classes.
2. Wear As Little Clothing As Decency Permits
When I am not at school or elsewhere in the community, I am usually at home. Normal rules of dress do not apply here, and I am free to change into a kromah. When Cambodian men are overheated, it is usually standard procedure for them to wear nothing except this cloth wrapped around their wastes like a towel. The cloth is usually very thin, so it is actually quite comfortable to even sleep with it on. Women can a wear a sarong, but as far as I can tell it is quite undignified for them to lay about in them as much as the men do.
3. Shower Early, Shower Often
I pour cold water over myself at least three to four times daily these days. When you are baked with sweat for hours at a time, it is pretty much the only thing you can do to get any kind of relief. Taking a cold nyuk dtuk and sitting in front of a fan is the closest thing you can get to air conditioning. It is also helpful if you shower right before going to bed, as the relief will relax you enough to fall asleep.
4. Ice
Iced coffee, tea, or Coke can be a lifesaver. Even if you just order a glass of ice, you can fill it with water as many times as you like. The girls who work at the café I usually go to have learned that I like a lot of ice in whatever drink I order that day. They have also commented on several occasions that they have never seen such a person frazzled by the heat. Cambodians seem hot during this season as well, but it does not seem like they get the headaches or stomach cramps that I get. I get the sense that they rather enjoy the heat, and dislike the wind and the rain.
Apologies in Advance
With these methods, I’m hoping that I can survive the Cambodian hot season. Even with these methods in place, I have to say that the onslaught of the heat has left me in a rather languid condition. My computer also seems to heat up rather quickly as well, and I am worried about not using it too much for fear of it dying. The season is affecting my ability to type as much as I have in the previous months. You must forgive me, dear reader, but I’m afraid the output of blog posts during this season will be less than those of the previous two seasons. There will be other posts to come though, as I write all of these notes by hand before I type them here.
All I can do now is just survive.
1. Find a Fan: Worship It and Keep It Happy
I currently have two fans. One is powered by normal electricity, and the other is powered by my car battery + inverter contraption. On nights that I want to use my computer, I sit on the tiled floor of my room and have a fan blow over the two of us. I try to go back and forth between using the two so that I don’t use too much of the family’s electricity. During the day, I go to the school’s office and sit under one of the big ceiling fans there. They are powered by the solar panels on the roof, and I usually try to take a nap under them if I can during the afternoons that I do not have any classes.
2. Wear As Little Clothing As Decency Permits
When I am not at school or elsewhere in the community, I am usually at home. Normal rules of dress do not apply here, and I am free to change into a kromah. When Cambodian men are overheated, it is usually standard procedure for them to wear nothing except this cloth wrapped around their wastes like a towel. The cloth is usually very thin, so it is actually quite comfortable to even sleep with it on. Women can a wear a sarong, but as far as I can tell it is quite undignified for them to lay about in them as much as the men do.
3. Shower Early, Shower Often
I pour cold water over myself at least three to four times daily these days. When you are baked with sweat for hours at a time, it is pretty much the only thing you can do to get any kind of relief. Taking a cold nyuk dtuk and sitting in front of a fan is the closest thing you can get to air conditioning. It is also helpful if you shower right before going to bed, as the relief will relax you enough to fall asleep.
4. Ice
Iced coffee, tea, or Coke can be a lifesaver. Even if you just order a glass of ice, you can fill it with water as many times as you like. The girls who work at the café I usually go to have learned that I like a lot of ice in whatever drink I order that day. They have also commented on several occasions that they have never seen such a person frazzled by the heat. Cambodians seem hot during this season as well, but it does not seem like they get the headaches or stomach cramps that I get. I get the sense that they rather enjoy the heat, and dislike the wind and the rain.
Apologies in Advance
With these methods, I’m hoping that I can survive the Cambodian hot season. Even with these methods in place, I have to say that the onslaught of the heat has left me in a rather languid condition. My computer also seems to heat up rather quickly as well, and I am worried about not using it too much for fear of it dying. The season is affecting my ability to type as much as I have in the previous months. You must forgive me, dear reader, but I’m afraid the output of blog posts during this season will be less than those of the previous two seasons. There will be other posts to come though, as I write all of these notes by hand before I type them here.
All I can do now is just survive.
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