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.
Friday, July 16, 2010
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 :)
Friday, May 7, 2010
March into Mango Season!
On April 3rd, I set off for Vietnam on vacation. Schools in Cambodia close for Khmer New Year for the entire month of April (although officially the New Year is only three days long) and so I decided to take this as an opportunity to venture out of Cambodia. Vietnam was an obvious choice because it is so close to where I am currently living (which is about 8 km from the Vietnam border) and I am often in contact with Vietnamese people. Two friends and I took the bus from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City (better known as Saigon) where we spent a night before catching an "open bus tour" north. We stopped in Dalat, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi, and Halong Bay. It was a whirlwind two weeks. My favorite spots were Hoi An and Halong Bay. Hoi An because of the large number of wooden houses from the 16th and 17th centuries as well as all the fun dress shops (where you could get outfits made for less than $20!); and Halong Bay because it was breathtakingly beautiful. On the 14th I returned home to celebrate the three most important days of the Khmer New Year.
New Year in Cambodia (Chaul Chnam Thmey in the Khmer language) is all about spending time with family. It depends on their lunar calendar but this year we celebrated on April 14th,15th, and 16th. People who have moved away from their homeland will come back for at least these three days. Romeas Hek (my site) is moderately sized (in rural Cambodia terms) – and has a population of somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand people. Due to lack of jobs and overall lack of amenities, most people choose to move away; mostly to larger towns where they can get a job in one of the many gament factories. The population at least tripled for Khmer New Year. An interesting fact about Cambodians and New Year is that, for the most part, everyone just turns a year older at the new year. They do not (usually) celebrate their birthdays. I'm definitely not the sharpest tack in the box because it was maybe around the 5th or 6th person telling me their birthday was April 15th when it dawned on me that everyone celebrates on the same day.
Every morning, for each of the three days of the new year, families go to a Pagoda and give food and money to the Buddhist monks after prayer. Sometime after lunch, people will then go to one or more of the private and public parties happening all over town. Nearly all day, every day, I ate, drank, and danced with people in my village. The best party I went to was at the nearby Wat (temple/pagoda). Here there were at least 100 people – many of them dancing, many more just watching, while gaggles of children threw powder and water on EVERYONE. I hope to upload some pictures on Picasa (a web server for pictures) soon. If you are on Facebook the pictures are uploaded already and are included in the album "Welcome to the Wat Party".
Although Cambodia doesn’t have the most official public holidays in the world (though close to it with about 25), I cannot doubt that it has the most UNOFFICIAL holidays. As I mentioned earlier we had the entire month of April off of school. This month, I am told the school may be closed more days than it will be open. This is due to King Norodom Sihamoni’s birthday on May 14, (3 days), the Royal Plowing Ceremony on May 12 (1 day), and Labor Day on May 1st and the fact that one day off usually leads to two days off or more.
New Year in Cambodia (Chaul Chnam Thmey in the Khmer language) is all about spending time with family. It depends on their lunar calendar but this year we celebrated on April 14th,15th, and 16th. People who have moved away from their homeland will come back for at least these three days. Romeas Hek (my site) is moderately sized (in rural Cambodia terms) – and has a population of somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand people. Due to lack of jobs and overall lack of amenities, most people choose to move away; mostly to larger towns where they can get a job in one of the many gament factories. The population at least tripled for Khmer New Year. An interesting fact about Cambodians and New Year is that, for the most part, everyone just turns a year older at the new year. They do not (usually) celebrate their birthdays. I'm definitely not the sharpest tack in the box because it was maybe around the 5th or 6th person telling me their birthday was April 15th when it dawned on me that everyone celebrates on the same day.
Every morning, for each of the three days of the new year, families go to a Pagoda and give food and money to the Buddhist monks after prayer. Sometime after lunch, people will then go to one or more of the private and public parties happening all over town. Nearly all day, every day, I ate, drank, and danced with people in my village. The best party I went to was at the nearby Wat (temple/pagoda). Here there were at least 100 people – many of them dancing, many more just watching, while gaggles of children threw powder and water on EVERYONE. I hope to upload some pictures on Picasa (a web server for pictures) soon. If you are on Facebook the pictures are uploaded already and are included in the album "Welcome to the Wat Party".
Although Cambodia doesn’t have the most official public holidays in the world (though close to it with about 25), I cannot doubt that it has the most UNOFFICIAL holidays. As I mentioned earlier we had the entire month of April off of school. This month, I am told the school may be closed more days than it will be open. This is due to King Norodom Sihamoni’s birthday on May 14, (3 days), the Royal Plowing Ceremony on May 12 (1 day), and Labor Day on May 1st and the fact that one day off usually leads to two days off or more.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Libraries and Rats
Every Thursday I sit in the high school’s “library” for two hours. I offer this time so that high school students may ask me questions regarding English (or anything, really). It either hasn’t caught on to my students, or they’re too busy, or they just don’t care, for (with the exception of about 5 students) the last few months I have been sitting by myself nearly the entire time. The problem could be in my advertising (there is none), the fact that the library is situated quite close to the school director’s office (location, location, location), or (and this is probably the real reason) is that the library is little more than a storage place and home to many rodents and birds. Not the best place to spend a few hours of your time, eh? It wasn’t until last week though, when two of my (brighter and more motivated) students from my 10 B class came to visit, that I really felt as though the office hours in the library were worth it.
At first they just came into the library to say hello, but I quickly persuaded them to “koy lange” (sit and visit). Off handedly I mentioned that there were a few dozen new English books in three cardboard boxes in the room, left from the last (and first) Peace Corps volunteer at my site. That was all it took. Together we ventured into the books, donated by the Asia Foundation. After a few minutes they stumbled upon a textbook called “My World”, a geography and history text book in one, and from the very first page were hooked. “Where is this Teacher?” they asked, pointing to a picture of the Acropolis. “Greece”, I tell them. “Where is Greece?” they ask innocently. I bring out a map and show them. Although nearly all of the students at my high school take “Geography” almost none of them could point to Europe on the map. It has me very interested in sitting in on one of their Geography lessons. The book has them engrossed for over an hour and has me answering questions like the following:
“What is nahto (NATO)?”
“Have you ever been to the pyramids? Why not?”
“What is that?” (pointing to a picture of the international space station) I answer that it is “a home in space” and that people from different countries live there. Their eyes become wide, then narrower as they are obviously mulling it over. They give the picture one more glance and then turn the page.
My office hours go by quickly that day and I bike home even more certain than ever that I want to finish what the first volunteer at my site attempted to do, and bring a library to the school. Luckily for me, I have a new school director who is seemingly behind the project. It won’t be easy by any means though. The “library” as it is now is a desk (for the “librarian”), a table, chairs, a shelf with unused/discarded textbooks, and a medley of different items that have found storage there. Mice and birds have taken up residence and their excrements cover nearly everything. The walls need to be painted, tenants evicted, shelves built, and books obtained. All seemingly easy except for the fact that nothing is as easy as it seems when you are a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cambodia*.
This week we have our In Service Training (IST) and I will hopefully be learning the ins and outs of grant writing and fundraising in Cambodia. No doubt I will keep you, my faithful blog reader, abreast of any developments as well as the address to send your check so that you may get involved in the project as well :)
Aside from teaching at the school, I also teach every Friday at the local Health Center. Many of the nurses there are between 30 and 45 years old and, if you are unfamiliar with Cambodian history, the years these individuals went to school were the most turbulent of any in the country’s history. Needless to say, they were not given the opportunity to learn English (although some do know a few words of French). When I began these lessons I had to start at the beginning – the ABCs. Most were familiar with them but could not recite them from memory nor remember all the sounds they make. There are two nurses, ages 24 and 25, who know quite a bit and seem glad to have a refresher course. Without a doubt I have the most fun teaching this group. Mostly because they want to be there and are eager to learn – but also, because I have been observing at the center for as long as I have been at site, we are all very comfortable with each other. Jokes abound and we seem to always end the class laughing.
Interlude: A library emerges out of the rat nests…
In December I filled out an application to an organization called Room to Read that was offering English books to needy schools in Cambodia. I had almost forgotten about it when I received a phone call from them asking if I could come by and pick up the 600 books they were giving my school. After a very turbulent weekend in Phnom Penh, I arrived at site with three very heavy boxes containing 600 various English books. The next day my host sisters and I together opened the boxes and happily went through the contents; “Magic School Bus!”, “Clifford!”, “Books on Teaching!’ I was very happily surprised with the selection.
We sat down, my sister Kohnteet and Sampoa, and for five hours wrote “Witchee-ah-lye Roomy Hike” (Romeas Hek High School) in permanent marker in every one of the donated books. I think it was around the 100th book that I realized I could write the name of my school in Khmer by memory. It is the only thing I can write in the language, but I’m proud. Khmer is not the easiest language to learn to write…
Later that day, our hands a bit sore from all the writing, my sisters loaded their moto with the first box and I followed in my bike. After three trips, all the books were safely inside the library. The next day, I had a sit down with the sub-school director who, thankfully, speaks English (my Khmer isn’t THAT good yet). We talked about the library and cleaning it up. He said he would talk to the school director and get back to me. The next day I got full reign to do whatever I pleased in the library as long as I didn’t throw out any books and on Thursday, the “official” cleaning day at the school, I would get at least thirty students to help me :)!
I was ecstatic – and full of dread! The library hadn’t been cleaned in at least fifteen years. The Ministry of Education has a policy that the high schools keep all text books for at least five years. My high school had …excuse me… has some dating back from 1996! I recognize this hording of books may be their showing appreciation for something they did not have twenty or thirty years ago. But can a worm eaten, rat poop covered, petrified to the floor, textbook be any use to anyone?
Well Thursday came and I made sure I came fortified with at least three cups of strong Vietnamese coffee in my system. Arriving thirty minutes early I took stock of everything that needed to be done, and where things would go. I was a bit overwhelmed. The coteacher assigned to help me, Mee-it, showed up soon after along with a twelfth grade student who had promised to help. We started clesning out the shelves and soon were joined by at least thirty of the 10th grade students. And then the “librarian” came. And any vestige of control I had over the project quickly was transferred to her and my coteacher. IT was all for the better actually, as I really didn’t know what to do with half the stuff we came across in that room. Medical supplies? A box of Khmer rice wine? Ten spools of copper wire? And somewhere around the time of discovering the iodine and drip bags a rat ran across my feet. I screamed (who wouldn’t??) which elicited many laughs from the students. “Teacher is afraid of mice!”, they taunted. After that I kind of stood towards the back and watched as the students moved the books, furniture, and miscellaneous things around and cleaned. There were too many hands in the kitchen, as some would say. And I did not want to risk having another rat crawl on my body. I may be in the Peace Corps, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
The students found four very large rat nests, dead birds, and many many books.Some were even petrified to the floor behind some of the shelves!
At first they just came into the library to say hello, but I quickly persuaded them to “koy lange” (sit and visit). Off handedly I mentioned that there were a few dozen new English books in three cardboard boxes in the room, left from the last (and first) Peace Corps volunteer at my site. That was all it took. Together we ventured into the books, donated by the Asia Foundation. After a few minutes they stumbled upon a textbook called “My World”, a geography and history text book in one, and from the very first page were hooked. “Where is this Teacher?” they asked, pointing to a picture of the Acropolis. “Greece”, I tell them. “Where is Greece?” they ask innocently. I bring out a map and show them. Although nearly all of the students at my high school take “Geography” almost none of them could point to Europe on the map. It has me very interested in sitting in on one of their Geography lessons. The book has them engrossed for over an hour and has me answering questions like the following:
“What is nahto (NATO)?”
“Have you ever been to the pyramids? Why not?”
“What is that?” (pointing to a picture of the international space station) I answer that it is “a home in space” and that people from different countries live there. Their eyes become wide, then narrower as they are obviously mulling it over. They give the picture one more glance and then turn the page.
My office hours go by quickly that day and I bike home even more certain than ever that I want to finish what the first volunteer at my site attempted to do, and bring a library to the school. Luckily for me, I have a new school director who is seemingly behind the project. It won’t be easy by any means though. The “library” as it is now is a desk (for the “librarian”), a table, chairs, a shelf with unused/discarded textbooks, and a medley of different items that have found storage there. Mice and birds have taken up residence and their excrements cover nearly everything. The walls need to be painted, tenants evicted, shelves built, and books obtained. All seemingly easy except for the fact that nothing is as easy as it seems when you are a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cambodia*.
This week we have our In Service Training (IST) and I will hopefully be learning the ins and outs of grant writing and fundraising in Cambodia. No doubt I will keep you, my faithful blog reader, abreast of any developments as well as the address to send your check so that you may get involved in the project as well :)
Aside from teaching at the school, I also teach every Friday at the local Health Center. Many of the nurses there are between 30 and 45 years old and, if you are unfamiliar with Cambodian history, the years these individuals went to school were the most turbulent of any in the country’s history. Needless to say, they were not given the opportunity to learn English (although some do know a few words of French). When I began these lessons I had to start at the beginning – the ABCs. Most were familiar with them but could not recite them from memory nor remember all the sounds they make. There are two nurses, ages 24 and 25, who know quite a bit and seem glad to have a refresher course. Without a doubt I have the most fun teaching this group. Mostly because they want to be there and are eager to learn – but also, because I have been observing at the center for as long as I have been at site, we are all very comfortable with each other. Jokes abound and we seem to always end the class laughing.
Interlude: A library emerges out of the rat nests…
In December I filled out an application to an organization called Room to Read that was offering English books to needy schools in Cambodia. I had almost forgotten about it when I received a phone call from them asking if I could come by and pick up the 600 books they were giving my school. After a very turbulent weekend in Phnom Penh, I arrived at site with three very heavy boxes containing 600 various English books. The next day my host sisters and I together opened the boxes and happily went through the contents; “Magic School Bus!”, “Clifford!”, “Books on Teaching!’ I was very happily surprised with the selection.
We sat down, my sister Kohnteet and Sampoa, and for five hours wrote “Witchee-ah-lye Roomy Hike” (Romeas Hek High School) in permanent marker in every one of the donated books. I think it was around the 100th book that I realized I could write the name of my school in Khmer by memory. It is the only thing I can write in the language, but I’m proud. Khmer is not the easiest language to learn to write…
Later that day, our hands a bit sore from all the writing, my sisters loaded their moto with the first box and I followed in my bike. After three trips, all the books were safely inside the library. The next day, I had a sit down with the sub-school director who, thankfully, speaks English (my Khmer isn’t THAT good yet). We talked about the library and cleaning it up. He said he would talk to the school director and get back to me. The next day I got full reign to do whatever I pleased in the library as long as I didn’t throw out any books and on Thursday, the “official” cleaning day at the school, I would get at least thirty students to help me :)!
I was ecstatic – and full of dread! The library hadn’t been cleaned in at least fifteen years. The Ministry of Education has a policy that the high schools keep all text books for at least five years. My high school had …excuse me… has some dating back from 1996! I recognize this hording of books may be their showing appreciation for something they did not have twenty or thirty years ago. But can a worm eaten, rat poop covered, petrified to the floor, textbook be any use to anyone?
Well Thursday came and I made sure I came fortified with at least three cups of strong Vietnamese coffee in my system. Arriving thirty minutes early I took stock of everything that needed to be done, and where things would go. I was a bit overwhelmed. The coteacher assigned to help me, Mee-it, showed up soon after along with a twelfth grade student who had promised to help. We started clesning out the shelves and soon were joined by at least thirty of the 10th grade students. And then the “librarian” came. And any vestige of control I had over the project quickly was transferred to her and my coteacher. IT was all for the better actually, as I really didn’t know what to do with half the stuff we came across in that room. Medical supplies? A box of Khmer rice wine? Ten spools of copper wire? And somewhere around the time of discovering the iodine and drip bags a rat ran across my feet. I screamed (who wouldn’t??) which elicited many laughs from the students. “Teacher is afraid of mice!”, they taunted. After that I kind of stood towards the back and watched as the students moved the books, furniture, and miscellaneous things around and cleaned. There were too many hands in the kitchen, as some would say. And I did not want to risk having another rat crawl on my body. I may be in the Peace Corps, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
The students found four very large rat nests, dead birds, and many many books.Some were even petrified to the floor behind some of the shelves!
Friday, March 5, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Living in Cambodia on 75 cents a day
After returning to site from my glorious 10 day trip to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, I came back to site with about $80 in my pocket. The following two weekends I proceeded to go to my provincial town and then Phnom Penh. Needless to say, when I came back from PP, I was broke as a joke. I had enough to get back to site with $10 left over and two weeks until my next "pay day". Could I survive at site for two weeks on 75 cents a day?
It took some heavy budgeting and a severe case of diarrhea but I made it with a dollar to spare:) Not only did I spend all my money in Phnom Penh but also picked up a lovely intestinal bug which kept me at home (and near the toilet) for four days. You could light about 10 houses for a week on the power I unleashed in that 4 by 6 foot room. When and if you ever come to Cambodia, take this advice seriously - DO NOT eat fresh fruit and vegetable without peeling them or washing them in bleach first AND always pick places you know will take food prep seriously. The upside of not doing these things is that you may get very ill and not want to eat. And if you don't want to eat then you won't spend any money. And if you don't spend any money then you might be able to afford the $20 entry fee into Angkor Wat.
Enough about my cash strapped, volunteer life. The next two weeks the entire high school where I teach will be taking their semester finals. As a volunteer, I do not need to be present during their exams and so I will be sitting under a mango tree and doing what I do best, studying Khmer, reading and/or staring into space. Having learned my lesson about going to Phnom Penh too often, I am opting to stay at site and only go into my provincial town when absolutely necessary.
It took some heavy budgeting and a severe case of diarrhea but I made it with a dollar to spare:) Not only did I spend all my money in Phnom Penh but also picked up a lovely intestinal bug which kept me at home (and near the toilet) for four days. You could light about 10 houses for a week on the power I unleashed in that 4 by 6 foot room. When and if you ever come to Cambodia, take this advice seriously - DO NOT eat fresh fruit and vegetable without peeling them or washing them in bleach first AND always pick places you know will take food prep seriously. The upside of not doing these things is that you may get very ill and not want to eat. And if you don't want to eat then you won't spend any money. And if you don't spend any money then you might be able to afford the $20 entry fee into Angkor Wat.
Enough about my cash strapped, volunteer life. The next two weeks the entire high school where I teach will be taking their semester finals. As a volunteer, I do not need to be present during their exams and so I will be sitting under a mango tree and doing what I do best, studying Khmer, reading and/or staring into space. Having learned my lesson about going to Phnom Penh too often, I am opting to stay at site and only go into my provincial town when absolutely necessary.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
A Cambodian Christmas
Well Christmas in Cambodia can both be a blessing and a curse. There are no Christmas displays, ads and commercials, or pressure to buy the perfect presents for my family and friends (if I had the funds that would be different). There is nothing even remotely Christmas-like in Cambodia; or at least in the provinces. With the exception of the other volunteers, the downside of it all is I have to bear through it relatively alone. Although it doesn’t feel like Christmas, I surely know its happening back home and it is hard not to think of eating delicious pies and cookies with good friends and family. The one place you can find Christmas in Cambodia is Phnom Penh. That was the surprise awaiting me and some of the other volunteers when we arrived on Christmas evening. The restaurants catering to foreign guests had all the lights and embellishments (TINSEL!) that we had been deprived of. We soaked it in. After our three long months of “lock down”, many (if not all) of the volunteers were ready to celebrate – not only Christmas but their freedom. We ate pizza and drank margaritas and danced like Americans. It was the most un-Christmas Christmas I have ever had.
Given the choice to return to site for two days and then come back to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (for New Years), I opted for annual leave so I could stay on and eat more cheese, and potentially lay by a pool (or two). It made my Christmas and New Years vacay a total of nearly ten days, and it was wonderful. I admit, after three months of limited (to almost no) electricity and no running water, I was ready to spoil myself. What is there to do in Phnom Penh? For me it was eat American food and go shopping. I ate to my hearts content, pizza, macaroni and cheese, quesadillas, bagel pizzas, bruschetta... the list goes on. The only thing I can truthfully say I did NOT eat was rice. It did not make sense for me to spend money on something I have to eat three times a day, seven days a week. Instead I focused on my favorite three food groups – cheese, bread, and pasta. Atkins has nothing on me.
On the 30th I packed my bags and headed to Siem Reap, a 5 or so hour bus ride from Phnom Penh. Siem Reap is famous for Angkor Wat and some other, beautiful and terribly old, temples. That was not my reason for going there though. Knowing that some friends and family will be coming to visit within the next year I opted to focus more on the city itself. I did not want to burn myself out on the temples before my loved ones had a chance to see them – it just wouldn’t be fair to them. So I stuck with what could never get old to me – shopping and eating. Five other volunteer girls and I bought new dresses for New Years Eve and that night had fun dressing up as though we weren’t in the Peace Corps but foreigners on vacation. It was a BLAST. As hundreds of other people on a crowded street in Siem Reap started counting down to 2010, we counted along with them. Six months in Cambodia down and with nineteen left to go, who knows what the New Year will bring to this small group of bleeding hearts halfway across the world from everyone else they know and love. For that night we were excited and happy and danced the night away; hopeful of a wonderful and successful year ahead. It was one of my best New Years so far.
I returned to site on the 3rd, happy but broke. Why does happiness (i.e. air conditioning and cheese) have to cost so much? My host family seemed happy to see me after my ten day disappearance. Unfortunately my bed was covered in dead bugs – a surprise because my mosquito net covered it entirely during my time away – and I quickly set about shaking them out and straightening up my room. Tomorrow I would teach again, and it would be much easier if I had my stuff together.
The students were better behaved than I remembered. Maybe it was like the old adage, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. Or maybe it was the short week ahead which brought about their remarkable upbeatness in the face of English grammar. The 7th of January is the day when, in 1979, “Vietnamese troops captured Phnom Penh establishing the People's Republic of Kampuchea.” The official rule of Pol Pot’s regime was over, although they continued to hold onto parts of Northwestern Cambodia until the late 1990s. Although my town celebrates this holiday on the 5th, because that is the day when they were liberated from the Khmer Rouge, we also have the 7th off. Out of my four day workweek, I would be teaching two days. It is no wonder why many people say that Cambodia has the most official holidays out of any other country in the world. Teaching was a breeze that week.
Currently I am in Svay Reing catching up on any internet time I did not get in Phnom Penh while also compiling a list of English names for my students to choose from. How appropriate do you think the names of Apple, Coco, Pax, and the Hulk are? They reflect people's names for our generation in the English speaking world. My Cambodian students should be made aware of them and prepared to meet people with names like these. It is only fair.
Given the choice to return to site for two days and then come back to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (for New Years), I opted for annual leave so I could stay on and eat more cheese, and potentially lay by a pool (or two). It made my Christmas and New Years vacay a total of nearly ten days, and it was wonderful. I admit, after three months of limited (to almost no) electricity and no running water, I was ready to spoil myself. What is there to do in Phnom Penh? For me it was eat American food and go shopping. I ate to my hearts content, pizza, macaroni and cheese, quesadillas, bagel pizzas, bruschetta... the list goes on. The only thing I can truthfully say I did NOT eat was rice. It did not make sense for me to spend money on something I have to eat three times a day, seven days a week. Instead I focused on my favorite three food groups – cheese, bread, and pasta. Atkins has nothing on me.
On the 30th I packed my bags and headed to Siem Reap, a 5 or so hour bus ride from Phnom Penh. Siem Reap is famous for Angkor Wat and some other, beautiful and terribly old, temples. That was not my reason for going there though. Knowing that some friends and family will be coming to visit within the next year I opted to focus more on the city itself. I did not want to burn myself out on the temples before my loved ones had a chance to see them – it just wouldn’t be fair to them. So I stuck with what could never get old to me – shopping and eating. Five other volunteer girls and I bought new dresses for New Years Eve and that night had fun dressing up as though we weren’t in the Peace Corps but foreigners on vacation. It was a BLAST. As hundreds of other people on a crowded street in Siem Reap started counting down to 2010, we counted along with them. Six months in Cambodia down and with nineteen left to go, who knows what the New Year will bring to this small group of bleeding hearts halfway across the world from everyone else they know and love. For that night we were excited and happy and danced the night away; hopeful of a wonderful and successful year ahead. It was one of my best New Years so far.
I returned to site on the 3rd, happy but broke. Why does happiness (i.e. air conditioning and cheese) have to cost so much? My host family seemed happy to see me after my ten day disappearance. Unfortunately my bed was covered in dead bugs – a surprise because my mosquito net covered it entirely during my time away – and I quickly set about shaking them out and straightening up my room. Tomorrow I would teach again, and it would be much easier if I had my stuff together.
The students were better behaved than I remembered. Maybe it was like the old adage, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. Or maybe it was the short week ahead which brought about their remarkable upbeatness in the face of English grammar. The 7th of January is the day when, in 1979, “Vietnamese troops captured Phnom Penh establishing the People's Republic of Kampuchea.” The official rule of Pol Pot’s regime was over, although they continued to hold onto parts of Northwestern Cambodia until the late 1990s. Although my town celebrates this holiday on the 5th, because that is the day when they were liberated from the Khmer Rouge, we also have the 7th off. Out of my four day workweek, I would be teaching two days. It is no wonder why many people say that Cambodia has the most official holidays out of any other country in the world. Teaching was a breeze that week.
Currently I am in Svay Reing catching up on any internet time I did not get in Phnom Penh while also compiling a list of English names for my students to choose from. How appropriate do you think the names of Apple, Coco, Pax, and the Hulk are? They reflect people's names for our generation in the English speaking world. My Cambodian students should be made aware of them and prepared to meet people with names like these. It is only fair.
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