Congratulations - you’ve won the golden ticket!
You’ve succeeded in securing the opportunity to serve the United States and the Peace Corps in one of the most amazing places in the world, Cambodia!
At first you may be a bit apprehensive. There were and are some strange rumors flying around out there about Cambodia – its people, culture, et al. Do not be worried though- only most of these are untrue.
What is true is that the people here are warm and welcoming and cannot wait to meet you. They will invite you in for lunch but you’ll stay until well after dinner. You will not be able to walk down a street without at least one child yelling “Hello!” to you or an older woman saying how beautiful you are (and this goes if you are a woman OR a man). And they will make sure that you are safe – even when you do not sense danger.
It needs your help though. Cambodia is rebuilding itself from basically nothing. Those five years under the Khmer Rouge cost it more than just that. Without educated people, communities went without education and reliable health care for a long time. Things are changing quickly, however, and I am constantly amazed at the incredible changes my rural community has undergone within the short time of me living there.
It is a very exciting time to be in Cambodia. And as a health volunteer even more so! The opportunities to affect and change other people’s lives are endless. My name is Kellee and I am an education and health volunteer. Our group, K3 (Kampuchea 3), was the guinea pig for the Peace Corps Community Health Education program. The K4 group was the first to have a group of just health volunteers; which makes you part of the second group ever, in Peace Corps Cambodia history, of Community Health Educators. While we fumbled around our health centers looking for ways to be productive and helpful, you will have a much easier time of it with the wisdom of two previous groups’ experiences to aid you in your encounters.
You may be nervous about teaching health in rural Cambodia. I was:
“Health?!” I exclaimed, “How can I teach about heath when I was a History major whose experience with Health is limited to a couple of CPR classes that the Red Cross taught me?”
My first hand experience has shown me that even something small, like teaching about hand washing, can go a long way. You do not need to be a Mayo brother to help Cambodia, just be flexible, open, and a good listener. And before you ever even step foot on site, you will have the benefit of some amazing training from Peace Corps staff that other volunteers here, outside Peace Corps, are quite jealous of.
So get ready to break out of the comfort zone, to do something different and amazing and meet wonderfully unique people while doing so! I am completely serious when I say you have won a prize by being picked to serve in Cambodia. It is a country rich with culture, beauty, and people who deserve your help. You can only be so lucky as to have served in Cambodia.
Best of luck in your service,
Kellee Keegan,
K3 Health and Education Volunteer
Romeas Hek District,
Svay Reing Province, Cambodia
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Last Night of my Life: Or Why I Will Never Ride a Taxi at Night in Cambodia
As I was heading home from the K4 (Kampuchea group 4) Swear-In ceremony - also known as the “rabies booster and flu shot stick-it-to-em round-up” – I thought I was going to die. Actually, I was very certain of it. For starters, the taxi that was “supposed” to leave at 2pm …didn’t leave until 6pm. Us Peace Corps Volunteers are not allowed to take transportation at night because of a number of things … things which I discovered after my experience; reasons that were and are legitimate grounds as to why a person should not attempt a nighttime jaunt on a Cambodian highway. But I will get to those later.
I, aware (but only blithely so) of the dangers, gave it a shrug and a sigh and texted my friends back in Phnom Penh at how annoying it was that I had been waiting in a taxi van for over three hours to leave. Most taxi vans must wait until it is economically viable before leaving - usually this is a certain number of people and or packages. We, apparently, did not have enough. As soon as we started to move along, a little after 6 pm, the rain started. For the first 20 minutes it was a medium to light rain (a drizzle one might say), but that was only the appetizer. The real party started nearly half an hour into the trip. If I had been driving in the Pacific Northwest even I would’ve considered pulling over (and we PNWers have mad skills at driving in the rain). Well the taxi van DID NOT have functioning windshield wipers AND the driver still chose to drive like the crazy taxi driver he was/is and pass anyone who thought to go below the speed limit. Can’t see the road? No problem for Mr. Taxi Driver.
As the windshield wipers would stick mid swing he would continue to drive (the manual) van and reach ACROSS the windshield to unstick it. I was lucky to have a front seat ticket to this show. Anyone who knows me knows I am fairly nervous passenger and this definitely put me on – if not over- the edge. I started thinking of all the last text messages, emails, and phone calls I had made – the final correspondence in which I would be judged for the rest of my family and friends living memories. Madly I kept hitting the invisible brake with my right foot.
The rain lightened eventually (as did my heart rate) and we came to the ferry crossing. To get to my province or Vietnam for that matter, you must take Highway 1 which “crosses” the Mekong. Or will cross the Mekong within the next few years (they just started to build a bridge). Currently it has a ferry crossing – fine during normal daytime hours that are not holidays- but a complete nightmare at night. You must wait there until there are enough cars to make the ferry trip feasible. And the ferry wasn’t even on our side of the river. The good thing about it raining, and being dark outside, is that there wasn’t the normal amount of sellers hounding us to buy their wares. “Hats?” “Fried grasshoppers?” “The latest Cambodian fashion magazines?” “Coka?”“Beer?” “Wine?” “Cigarettes?” You name it – they got it.
Unfortunately I was a bit hungry at this point – it was nearly 8pm and I would not be able to make it to my house in time for dinner…and so I was kind of missing the drive-up service. I opened the door of the van and looked at the river of water which was flowing above the highway underneath my feet and then into the dark, peering into the surrounding abyss and searching desperately in the direction of something edible. The friend of the taxi driver saw my hungry eyes and volunteered to go get me some hot meaty porridge, or “bohboh”. I gladly accepted and handed him the money.
Usually I am not a bohboh fan, unless I am at a place where I know it will be good, like friends’ houses, or parties, etc. But “side-of-the-street” bohboh? Not so much. Of course it initially tasted delicious, but as soon as I got to the meaty parts I started to have second thoughts. In the catalogue of meats and meat parts I recognized some chicken and… squid? The parts of the chicken I recognized were leg and … stomach? Whereas squid… well it looked like squid.
After nearly 45 minutes we were off again! I was so happy just to be moving I nearly forgot that just an hour or so earlier I was thinking that throwing me out of the car was a safer option then being in the car itself. For an hour the ride went fairly smoothly. He dropped off a couple in Svay Reing but got in a tiff over the fare price (which the customers hadn't negotiated beforehand. After a few coarse words, the couple won out and so we drove away angrily in the direction on Romeas Hek.
We had a few close calls on the way back. The road to Romeas Hek is pretty quiet – although since it has been paved it’s become increasingly busy (hence all the car accidents I’ve come upon while bike riding back to site). There was a cow, a kid on a bicycle, and a few dogs. About a half an hour from my site I breathed a sigh of relief. We had almost made it! I hadn’t died and we hadn’t hit anything!
And then we hit the dog.
I noticed him a quick second before he tumbled underneath the taxi van’s wheels. I was sitting upfront (best seat in the house) next to another woman and the taxi driver. The woman’s reaction mirrored my own… she too had her hand over her mouth and had exclaimed a loud “Oh!”. The men at first were exclaiming how stupid the dog was… and then about 20 meters down the road the taxi driver started to slow down and ask his friends whether he should go back.
Now in the US, to go back after you hit an animal is to find its owner… or move it to the side of the road at least. No, they wanted it to eat. Tere is nothing that goes better with Cambodian rice wine and friends company than some fresh dog curry. We turned around and the taxi driver’s friend quickly jumped out of the vehicle and grabbed the prize. Eating dog has not always been a Cambodian tradition, in fact I have been told by a number of reliable sources that the taste of dog meat was adopted from their neighbors, the Vietnamese. Whether it is true or not, Cambodian men eat dog. Sometimes, as in this case, it is road kill. But sometimes the dog is just a tramp that happened to wander into the wrong place at the wrong time. Rarely, if ever, do I hear of a Cambodian person buying dog meat. I actually asked my host dad’s friends this question as they themselves were settling down around a plate of barbequed dog pieces as to where you could buy dog meat in town. “Dog meat? You never buy dog meat! It is much too expensive!” and that was when I got the answer as to where the dog they were eating came from. “It was wandering around the rubber tree plantation (that my host family owns)”.
So, I was already well aware of what happens to dogs in Cambodia when this event occurred. If I had experienced this before I came to Cambodia, I may have been shocked, felt ill, or even cried ( I was a vegetarian – and plan on being one again once I return to the USA). But now, things like that night have become almost second nature (although I still do recognize the weirdness of it all). That night was just an amalgamation of many different, frightening, and odd occurrences. When I got back to site I almost wept; I had survived!
Now those reasons that were and are legitimate grounds for not traveling at night in Cambodia (and these go for every mode of transportation):
1) The vehicle may or may not have functioning headlights and/or windshield wipers
2) There are rarely, if ever, seatbelts
3) Cambodian people, animals, et al. like to meet up in the night… on the highway
4) There is ONE brain surgeon in the entire country of Cambodia. And the chance the doctor is on vacation when needed? Very likely
5) No one is monitoring the speed of vehicles on the highways at night. People can drive very recklessly unheeded… and they do.
6) If you are in the unfortunate situation of being in a car accident at night, it may be a long while before anyone of authority reaches you. And by the time they do, there is a high likelihood that the driver and all the passengers (who were capable) would’ve left the scene.
***
I am at site now, and plan on staying here for as much as I can the next 11 months I have. I am aided in this by having an internet phone that can FINALLY (and hopefully will) become a modem when attached to my computed. So, hopefully, I will be able to post many more blog entries from my site before this adventure is over. As for this one, it has been posted in the lovely Provincial town of Svay Reing.
I, aware (but only blithely so) of the dangers, gave it a shrug and a sigh and texted my friends back in Phnom Penh at how annoying it was that I had been waiting in a taxi van for over three hours to leave. Most taxi vans must wait until it is economically viable before leaving - usually this is a certain number of people and or packages. We, apparently, did not have enough. As soon as we started to move along, a little after 6 pm, the rain started. For the first 20 minutes it was a medium to light rain (a drizzle one might say), but that was only the appetizer. The real party started nearly half an hour into the trip. If I had been driving in the Pacific Northwest even I would’ve considered pulling over (and we PNWers have mad skills at driving in the rain). Well the taxi van DID NOT have functioning windshield wipers AND the driver still chose to drive like the crazy taxi driver he was/is and pass anyone who thought to go below the speed limit. Can’t see the road? No problem for Mr. Taxi Driver.
As the windshield wipers would stick mid swing he would continue to drive (the manual) van and reach ACROSS the windshield to unstick it. I was lucky to have a front seat ticket to this show. Anyone who knows me knows I am fairly nervous passenger and this definitely put me on – if not over- the edge. I started thinking of all the last text messages, emails, and phone calls I had made – the final correspondence in which I would be judged for the rest of my family and friends living memories. Madly I kept hitting the invisible brake with my right foot.
The rain lightened eventually (as did my heart rate) and we came to the ferry crossing. To get to my province or Vietnam for that matter, you must take Highway 1 which “crosses” the Mekong. Or will cross the Mekong within the next few years (they just started to build a bridge). Currently it has a ferry crossing – fine during normal daytime hours that are not holidays- but a complete nightmare at night. You must wait there until there are enough cars to make the ferry trip feasible. And the ferry wasn’t even on our side of the river. The good thing about it raining, and being dark outside, is that there wasn’t the normal amount of sellers hounding us to buy their wares. “Hats?” “Fried grasshoppers?” “The latest Cambodian fashion magazines?” “Coka?”“Beer?” “Wine?” “Cigarettes?” You name it – they got it.
Unfortunately I was a bit hungry at this point – it was nearly 8pm and I would not be able to make it to my house in time for dinner…and so I was kind of missing the drive-up service. I opened the door of the van and looked at the river of water which was flowing above the highway underneath my feet and then into the dark, peering into the surrounding abyss and searching desperately in the direction of something edible. The friend of the taxi driver saw my hungry eyes and volunteered to go get me some hot meaty porridge, or “bohboh”. I gladly accepted and handed him the money.
Usually I am not a bohboh fan, unless I am at a place where I know it will be good, like friends’ houses, or parties, etc. But “side-of-the-street” bohboh? Not so much. Of course it initially tasted delicious, but as soon as I got to the meaty parts I started to have second thoughts. In the catalogue of meats and meat parts I recognized some chicken and… squid? The parts of the chicken I recognized were leg and … stomach? Whereas squid… well it looked like squid.
After nearly 45 minutes we were off again! I was so happy just to be moving I nearly forgot that just an hour or so earlier I was thinking that throwing me out of the car was a safer option then being in the car itself. For an hour the ride went fairly smoothly. He dropped off a couple in Svay Reing but got in a tiff over the fare price (which the customers hadn't negotiated beforehand. After a few coarse words, the couple won out and so we drove away angrily in the direction on Romeas Hek.
We had a few close calls on the way back. The road to Romeas Hek is pretty quiet – although since it has been paved it’s become increasingly busy (hence all the car accidents I’ve come upon while bike riding back to site). There was a cow, a kid on a bicycle, and a few dogs. About a half an hour from my site I breathed a sigh of relief. We had almost made it! I hadn’t died and we hadn’t hit anything!
And then we hit the dog.
I noticed him a quick second before he tumbled underneath the taxi van’s wheels. I was sitting upfront (best seat in the house) next to another woman and the taxi driver. The woman’s reaction mirrored my own… she too had her hand over her mouth and had exclaimed a loud “Oh!”. The men at first were exclaiming how stupid the dog was… and then about 20 meters down the road the taxi driver started to slow down and ask his friends whether he should go back.
Now in the US, to go back after you hit an animal is to find its owner… or move it to the side of the road at least. No, they wanted it to eat. Tere is nothing that goes better with Cambodian rice wine and friends company than some fresh dog curry. We turned around and the taxi driver’s friend quickly jumped out of the vehicle and grabbed the prize. Eating dog has not always been a Cambodian tradition, in fact I have been told by a number of reliable sources that the taste of dog meat was adopted from their neighbors, the Vietnamese. Whether it is true or not, Cambodian men eat dog. Sometimes, as in this case, it is road kill. But sometimes the dog is just a tramp that happened to wander into the wrong place at the wrong time. Rarely, if ever, do I hear of a Cambodian person buying dog meat. I actually asked my host dad’s friends this question as they themselves were settling down around a plate of barbequed dog pieces as to where you could buy dog meat in town. “Dog meat? You never buy dog meat! It is much too expensive!” and that was when I got the answer as to where the dog they were eating came from. “It was wandering around the rubber tree plantation (that my host family owns)”.
So, I was already well aware of what happens to dogs in Cambodia when this event occurred. If I had experienced this before I came to Cambodia, I may have been shocked, felt ill, or even cried ( I was a vegetarian – and plan on being one again once I return to the USA). But now, things like that night have become almost second nature (although I still do recognize the weirdness of it all). That night was just an amalgamation of many different, frightening, and odd occurrences. When I got back to site I almost wept; I had survived!
Now those reasons that were and are legitimate grounds for not traveling at night in Cambodia (and these go for every mode of transportation):
1) The vehicle may or may not have functioning headlights and/or windshield wipers
2) There are rarely, if ever, seatbelts
3) Cambodian people, animals, et al. like to meet up in the night… on the highway
4) There is ONE brain surgeon in the entire country of Cambodia. And the chance the doctor is on vacation when needed? Very likely
5) No one is monitoring the speed of vehicles on the highways at night. People can drive very recklessly unheeded… and they do.
6) If you are in the unfortunate situation of being in a car accident at night, it may be a long while before anyone of authority reaches you. And by the time they do, there is a high likelihood that the driver and all the passengers (who were capable) would’ve left the scene.
***
I am at site now, and plan on staying here for as much as I can the next 11 months I have. I am aided in this by having an internet phone that can FINALLY (and hopefully will) become a modem when attached to my computed. So, hopefully, I will be able to post many more blog entries from my site before this adventure is over. As for this one, it has been posted in the lovely Provincial town of Svay Reing.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
So Long Sweet Summer
As I passed the year mark of me being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cambodia, and said goodbye to summer and welcomed the new volunteers, I had the feeling of a high school senior who looks upon their last year of high school in anxiety and excitement. What will I be able to accomplish this year? And when the end comes will I know what to do next?
I was luckily enough to have my father and brother visit for nearly the entire month of August. It gave me the feeling of home without setting foot back on American soil.
And it gave me a little bit of an idea of what my family and friends think of my service in Cambodia. Sometimes it feels as if I am trying to run through water; exerting alot of effort but getting nowhere. It was nice for my family to be here because they showed me that even if I don't have something tangible to show after my year here, I do have many close relationships with local people that are as, if not more, important as anything else.
It was also nice to have my family here because I got to travel around Cambodia and see the tourist spots - Angkor Wat, Phnom Sampeau and Wat Banan in Battambang, and others - that I haven't been able to see yet due to lack of funds and/or time. Angkor Wat was just as magnificent as people make it out to be - albeit very, very hot. I still can recall the eerie feeling of being at the Bayon Temple and having over 200 giant faces staring at me; both awesome and creepy. The best part of the whole trip was when my father and brother came to my site. They were given the royal treatment to say the least. And everyone wanted to take a picture with my 6 foot, blond-haired, blue-eyed brother. Even the district governor went out of his way to welcome them to Romeas Hek. After a day of meetings in the provincial town he made sure to drive to my house at 10pm and have a nightcap with my father, brother, and I after which invite us to breakfast the following morning. I really appreciated the overall welcome that my community showed my family and I felt very lucky to have been placed in such a lovely place with such friendly people :)
Here are some pictures from the family adventures in SE Asia....
I was luckily enough to have my father and brother visit for nearly the entire month of August. It gave me the feeling of home without setting foot back on American soil.
And it gave me a little bit of an idea of what my family and friends think of my service in Cambodia. Sometimes it feels as if I am trying to run through water; exerting alot of effort but getting nowhere. It was nice for my family to be here because they showed me that even if I don't have something tangible to show after my year here, I do have many close relationships with local people that are as, if not more, important as anything else.
It was also nice to have my family here because I got to travel around Cambodia and see the tourist spots - Angkor Wat, Phnom Sampeau and Wat Banan in Battambang, and others - that I haven't been able to see yet due to lack of funds and/or time. Angkor Wat was just as magnificent as people make it out to be - albeit very, very hot. I still can recall the eerie feeling of being at the Bayon Temple and having over 200 giant faces staring at me; both awesome and creepy. The best part of the whole trip was when my father and brother came to my site. They were given the royal treatment to say the least. And everyone wanted to take a picture with my 6 foot, blond-haired, blue-eyed brother. Even the district governor went out of his way to welcome them to Romeas Hek. After a day of meetings in the provincial town he made sure to drive to my house at 10pm and have a nightcap with my father, brother, and I after which invite us to breakfast the following morning. I really appreciated the overall welcome that my community showed my family and I felt very lucky to have been placed in such a lovely place with such friendly people :)
Here are some pictures from the family adventures in SE Asia....
Friday, July 16, 2010
I love Cambodia, I swear!
After re-reading my previous blog entry, I realize just how whiny and depressed I sounded. This entry is to redeem myself as well as give a more accurate picture of my life in Cambodia a year after I arrived here.
School "concluded" for the rainy season in June (the exception being the 12th grade students who had their final exams last week)- which means I have four months of vacation from teaching until school officially starts on October 1st. The first month I took it easy; read ALOT, visited the provincial town nearly every weekend (yay internet!), but mostly just hung out with the people at my site. It has been awesome because I have been able to relax with my co-teachers and get to know them better. One of my co-teachers and I are even taking Chinese classes together starting at the end of September... cant wait :)
It was interesting celebrating the 4th of July in Cambodia. The US Embassy had a party/carnival - lots of live music,good food and beer, and a pie eating contest (I didn't participate). If it only had some fireworks I think it would have been perfect. Afterward, some volunteers and I met up to continue the merry-making and go dancing. The only unfortunate thing about the trip was that I had to bike from my provincial town back to site - with a 40 lb backpack on my back. No Fun. But I think that kind of forced exercising is responsible for the 12 lbs I have lost in Cambodia so far.
Minus the physical hardship, biking back wasn't that bad...especially towards the end. I had only been gone about 4 days but people were yelling to me from the sides of the road, on bikes, and on motos "you're beautiful! where you go? we miss you!" NOW if only I had a homecoming like that every time I came home :)
Captured Animals and Dead People
The wet season is in full swing which has brought about a plethora of insects and animals outside and INSIDE the house (spiders, ants, mosquitoes, rats.. you know, the usual). My family has taken the opportunity to catch some of these wild animals in cages. So far they have captured two Mynah birds and a bunny. My eleven year-old host brother has trained the birds to follow him around the house and sit on his shoulder... impressive considering these birds were wild only three weeks ago. The bunny has, unfortunately, already seen its end. It wasn't surprising considering no one ever gave it anything more than leaves to eat OR drink. Without an autopsy, I can assume that its death was gross malnutrition/dehydration.
The death of the bunny wasn't the only one I encountered that week - actually it was the third. The first was a boy on a moto... and NO he wasn't driving. He was laying there, limp as a rag doll, with very grey skin wedged between the driver and his friend who was holding him up. I was sitting outside my coteacher's language school when they passed by. Apparently he was a 12 years old and had "fallen in the water and drowned".
The second was the most strange. I was about an hour and a half into my bike ride from the provincial town to my site when I saw a large crown of Khmer people standing in the road around a woman. Her head was bent at an unnatural angleto the left6 and the rest her body was positioned to the right. I stood fopr awhile outside the crowd wondering if it would be okay to keep riding my bicycle or to do something... help somehow? It took about 5 minutes for the cros to recognizee the foreigner in their midst. When they saw me they started to smile and wave - gesturing me to continue biking on the road. Some Khmer men took it upon themselnes to shield me from the carnage by moving two motos around the body. It was too late though, I had already seen everything, and their attempt to hide it was in vain. When relaying the story to my host sisters they smiled and asked me, "How many people were there?"
Does your brother have all his teeth?
One afternoon as I was sitting, enjoying the company of Nary and her mother while watching people go into and out of the market, Nary started talking about how she recently had a tooth pulled. I asked her how much it cost and if she always got it done when her teeth hurt. She proceeded to open her mouth and show me all her missing teeth. Nary is 24 and the fact that she is missing 5 teeth already depressed me. She told me it was $5 in Vietnam and that it "didn't hurt". I went on to give her the dentist's spiel of brushing at least twice a day (I would've mentioned flossing but I have already been told that floss is too expensive for most Cambodians - my host family uses palm leaves instead AND it works - each of my family members have a beautiful set of teeth).
They then asked me if I had all of my teeth. When I said yes they demanded to see... as if they didn't believe me. After I opened my mouth to show them they then asked me about other family members' teeth... particularly my father and brother (who will be visiting in two weeks:)). When I, for the second time, told them that yes... my brother has all his teeth... the conversation dissipated into nothing and we sat there in near silence, watching the people go in and out of the market with their wares.
After re-reading my previous blog entry, I realize just how whiny and depressed I sounded. This entry is to redeem myself as well as give a more accurate picture of my life in Cambodia a year after I arrived here.
School "concluded" for the rainy season in June (the exception being the 12th grade students who had their final exams last week)- which means I have four months of vacation from teaching until school officially starts on October 1st. The first month I took it easy; read ALOT, visited the provincial town nearly every weekend (yay internet!), but mostly just hung out with the people at my site. It has been awesome because I have been able to relax with my co-teachers and get to know them better. One of my co-teachers and I are even taking Chinese classes together starting at the end of September... cant wait :)
It was interesting celebrating the 4th of July in Cambodia. The US Embassy had a party/carnival - lots of live music,good food and beer, and a pie eating contest (I didn't participate). If it only had some fireworks I think it would have been perfect. Afterward, some volunteers and I met up to continue the merry-making and go dancing. The only unfortunate thing about the trip was that I had to bike from my provincial town back to site - with a 40 lb backpack on my back. No Fun. But I think that kind of forced exercising is responsible for the 12 lbs I have lost in Cambodia so far.
Minus the physical hardship, biking back wasn't that bad...especially towards the end. I had only been gone about 4 days but people were yelling to me from the sides of the road, on bikes, and on motos "you're beautiful! where you go? we miss you!" NOW if only I had a homecoming like that every time I came home :)
Captured Animals and Dead People
The wet season is in full swing which has brought about a plethora of insects and animals outside and INSIDE the house (spiders, ants, mosquitoes, rats.. you know, the usual). My family has taken the opportunity to catch some of these wild animals in cages. So far they have captured two Mynah birds and a bunny. My eleven year-old host brother has trained the birds to follow him around the house and sit on his shoulder... impressive considering these birds were wild only three weeks ago. The bunny has, unfortunately, already seen its end. It wasn't surprising considering no one ever gave it anything more than leaves to eat OR drink. Without an autopsy, I can assume that its death was gross malnutrition/dehydration.
The death of the bunny wasn't the only one I encountered that week - actually it was the third. The first was a boy on a moto... and NO he wasn't driving. He was laying there, limp as a rag doll, with very grey skin wedged between the driver and his friend who was holding him up. I was sitting outside my coteacher's language school when they passed by. Apparently he was a 12 years old and had "fallen in the water and drowned".
The second was the most strange. I was about an hour and a half into my bike ride from the provincial town to my site when I saw a large crown of Khmer people standing in the road around a woman. Her head was bent at an unnatural angleto the left6 and the rest her body was positioned to the right. I stood fopr awhile outside the crowd wondering if it would be okay to keep riding my bicycle or to do something... help somehow? It took about 5 minutes for the cros to recognizee the foreigner in their midst. When they saw me they started to smile and wave - gesturing me to continue biking on the road. Some Khmer men took it upon themselnes to shield me from the carnage by moving two motos around the body. It was too late though, I had already seen everything, and their attempt to hide it was in vain. When relaying the story to my host sisters they smiled and asked me, "How many people were there?"
Does your brother have all his teeth?
One afternoon as I was sitting, enjoying the company of Nary and her mother while watching people go into and out of the market, Nary started talking about how she recently had a tooth pulled. I asked her how much it cost and if she always got it done when her teeth hurt. She proceeded to open her mouth and show me all her missing teeth. Nary is 24 and the fact that she is missing 5 teeth already depressed me. She told me it was $5 in Vietnam and that it "didn't hurt". I went on to give her the dentist's spiel of brushing at least twice a day (I would've mentioned flossing but I have already been told that floss is too expensive for most Cambodians - my host family uses palm leaves instead AND it works - each of my family members have a beautiful set of teeth).
They then asked me if I had all of my teeth. When I said yes they demanded to see... as if they didn't believe me. After I opened my mouth to show them they then asked me about other family members' teeth... particularly my father and brother (who will be visiting in two weeks:)). When I, for the second time, told them that yes... my brother has all his teeth... the conversation dissipated into nothing and we sat there in near silence, watching the people go in and out of the market with their wares.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
My Life is a Technostrophe
Living in the middle of Nowhere, Cambodia, you come to rely on some things to keep you sane. For me, those things were my shortwave radio and my laptop computer. Every night I was able to catch up on the world news via the BBC and maybe watch a movie once or twice a week on my laptop. I looked forward to these things and relied on them.. maybe a little too much.
This all changed less than two months ago.
First to go was my shortwave. I have to admit, I may have had a hand in its demise. I often keep my window shutters open (much to my Cambodian mother's chagrin) and, as my room is little more than a closet, means that my things have a very close proximity to the windows. These things can (and do) get very wet when it starts raining. More than once I have returned to my room after a day of teaching only to find my mattress is sopping wet and pieces of the mango tree outside my window are littering the floor. This may also be the reason as to why my room has developed a particular funk to it...
Anyways, it was after one of these storms that my radio just stopped working. I was going to Phnom Penh a few days later and kind of put my loss on the back burner and promised to grieve another, more convenient, time. I was also naively optimistic that after my return from Phnom Penh it would just start magicaly working again.
My first morning in Phnom Penh, I grabbed my laptop and went to "the usual" breakfast place to eat a bagel and skype with my family. After a wonderful two hours of skyping, my family and I said goodbye and I went on to do some some other work on the internet. Less than 5 minutes later the screen went black. No amount of turning it back on would work. I wasn't completely convinced that it was broken though, the lights on my keyboard DID light up - which meant it did turn on. I took it to THE place to get computers fixed and after a week, and relinquishing $20 to them, they weren't able to tell me what the problem was.
Maybe it is the stress of being in a foreign country - or the emotional attachment I had to these machines - that I kind of flipped out in the computer store. While I sat there, head down, letting the loss of not one, but two, of my most treasured possessions overtake me ... the store clerk just stared. I was lucky it was a nearly silent affair... but I still didn't appreciate her gawking and quickly left the building for some icecream therapy at the air conditioned mall a block away. Her reaction, coupled with my entire last year of experiences, has convinced me that most Cambodian people do not cry (which is in entirely opposite to anything you might see in a Cambodian music video). At nearly every function I have been to relating to the Khmer Rouge, there will be that one woman or man who will be crying. These people are often stared at, pointed to, but for the most part ignored. Not that I am comparing what they went through to MY loss, just that their stoicism in the face of their tragic past baffles me... and leads me to believe that they have a very hard time -even some 30 years later - dealing with what happened. Something that I like to call "emotional constipation". A condition that I may even suffer from and may justify why I broke down in Phnom Penh and then a week and some days later when I couldn't find a level for my World Map project in my provincial town :P.
Now, since it is summer vacation, I am drowning in free time without the few things that used to keep me distracted from the heat, mosquitoes, and overall loneliness of being in a foreign and isolated place. It has definitely forced me to get creative with my time. I have been working on my blood-pressure taking skills, training for a half marathon, participating in a language exchange with one of my co-teachers, studying for the GRE, and I'm going to hopefully start studying Chinese at a nearby Chinese school. Since this technostrophe, I have also been biking the 40k to my provincial town twice a week (making a total of over 110 miles a week on my bike!).
The loss of my computer took a toll on my blogging...which is why it has been about so long since my last entry. I will be back in town next week to fill you all on what has been going on at my site and in the Peace Corps world of Cambodia.
Until then :)
This all changed less than two months ago.
First to go was my shortwave. I have to admit, I may have had a hand in its demise. I often keep my window shutters open (much to my Cambodian mother's chagrin) and, as my room is little more than a closet, means that my things have a very close proximity to the windows. These things can (and do) get very wet when it starts raining. More than once I have returned to my room after a day of teaching only to find my mattress is sopping wet and pieces of the mango tree outside my window are littering the floor. This may also be the reason as to why my room has developed a particular funk to it...
Anyways, it was after one of these storms that my radio just stopped working. I was going to Phnom Penh a few days later and kind of put my loss on the back burner and promised to grieve another, more convenient, time. I was also naively optimistic that after my return from Phnom Penh it would just start magicaly working again.
My first morning in Phnom Penh, I grabbed my laptop and went to "the usual" breakfast place to eat a bagel and skype with my family. After a wonderful two hours of skyping, my family and I said goodbye and I went on to do some some other work on the internet. Less than 5 minutes later the screen went black. No amount of turning it back on would work. I wasn't completely convinced that it was broken though, the lights on my keyboard DID light up - which meant it did turn on. I took it to THE place to get computers fixed and after a week, and relinquishing $20 to them, they weren't able to tell me what the problem was.
Maybe it is the stress of being in a foreign country - or the emotional attachment I had to these machines - that I kind of flipped out in the computer store. While I sat there, head down, letting the loss of not one, but two, of my most treasured possessions overtake me ... the store clerk just stared. I was lucky it was a nearly silent affair... but I still didn't appreciate her gawking and quickly left the building for some icecream therapy at the air conditioned mall a block away. Her reaction, coupled with my entire last year of experiences, has convinced me that most Cambodian people do not cry (which is in entirely opposite to anything you might see in a Cambodian music video). At nearly every function I have been to relating to the Khmer Rouge, there will be that one woman or man who will be crying. These people are often stared at, pointed to, but for the most part ignored. Not that I am comparing what they went through to MY loss, just that their stoicism in the face of their tragic past baffles me... and leads me to believe that they have a very hard time -even some 30 years later - dealing with what happened. Something that I like to call "emotional constipation". A condition that I may even suffer from and may justify why I broke down in Phnom Penh and then a week and some days later when I couldn't find a level for my World Map project in my provincial town :P.
Now, since it is summer vacation, I am drowning in free time without the few things that used to keep me distracted from the heat, mosquitoes, and overall loneliness of being in a foreign and isolated place. It has definitely forced me to get creative with my time. I have been working on my blood-pressure taking skills, training for a half marathon, participating in a language exchange with one of my co-teachers, studying for the GRE, and I'm going to hopefully start studying Chinese at a nearby Chinese school. Since this technostrophe, I have also been biking the 40k to my provincial town twice a week (making a total of over 110 miles a week on my bike!).
The loss of my computer took a toll on my blogging...which is why it has been about so long since my last entry. I will be back in town next week to fill you all on what has been going on at my site and in the Peace Corps world of Cambodia.
Until then :)
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