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.