I appreciate an honest self-assessment

     We passed this restaurant while out on a bike ride yesterday. I appreciate its lack of pretension - they're a one star restaurant, and they know it. "We are what we are. Come in and eat here, or don't. But come with appropriate expectations."

      If only all organizations were willing to be transparent. *sigh*

     (OK, I know that the name has nothing to do with the Michelin restaurant rating system, but once again, I prefer to amuse myself with my own interpretation.)

One Star Restaurant
We Are What We Are.

  

Gridlock

     Water Festival in Cambodia has just come to an end, which means that the town is eerily quiet today. This town really transforms for 2-3 days - the river is lined with people watching the dragon boat races, food stalls and carnival games and rickety amusement rides are set up along the riverside, beer tents appear and draw brisk business, music blares and fireworks explode and a general sense of revelry rules. It makes for lots of good people-watching, and makes it next to impossible to get across town due to the absolute gridlock of bicycles, motorbikes, tuktuks, vans, trucks, tractors and people on foot. The few traffic lights in town don't begin to handle the hordes, and everything comes to a grinding halt, too crowded even to ride your bicycle through at times. (I've seen people lift their bicycles over the heads and carry them between the jammed cars and other vehicles.)

Gridlock on Wat Bo Road

Score! Seven people on one moto!
(Count heads if you don't believe me.)

     I had some wonderful and interesting moments during the festival, which I'll tell you more about shortly, but I'm sure some of you are wondering about my interesting adventures at work last week. Those who subscribe to the blog notification emails know a bit about those adventures, since I inadvertently sent (to all 45 of you) a juicy email meant only for Steve that consisted of a draft of a letter to someone at "work." Those who don't subscribe to those emails - and now I bet you wish you did! - should know that I'm having some..."conflicts" with management there. I alluded to that in a posting last week, so I don't really need to say more.

     As you might imagine, I was horrified when it was pointed out to me that I had accidentally sent the email to the whole list - not so much because of the content, but because I was really embarrassed about having made the technical error of selecting the wrong email address. It's something I always feared doing, and given the volume of email I write, it's only surprising that I hadn't done it before - though sending it to 45 people was a bit much! The title of the email identified it as a draft and requested feedback, and I would just like to thank everyone who provided some - I hope by now that I've answered all the personal emails I got in response. I'm in awe of those who reported that they realized that I had sent it in error and deleted it without reading it all the way through. I wish I could say I would do the same if I received such an email. but I identify much more with those who read it and were only disappointed that it wasn't even more exciting. In any case, the draft was polished and sent and I've received email responses from two of the three intended recipients, and the story will continue to unfold when I go back to work on Wednesday, I'm sure. More to come.

     The five-day holiday from work came at a lovely time, and I've been trying to make the most of it. On Saturday afternoon, I spent a few hours watching the boat races with a group of young Khmers. I arranged to meet up with the girls from PAGE (Program Advancing Girls' Education), a dozen girls age 15-20 who come from the countryside and live together with a housemother and focus on their studies. I know the girls from briefly doing some English teaching with them a year ago, and try to spend some time with them when I can. I love their adolescent enthusiasm and energy, and to be honest, I love that they always seem happy to see me. (Not everyone does these days!) I also arranged to take two children from the hospital for a few hours so they could come along for the festivities.

     These two are a young sibling pair who showed up at our clinic on the first of the month. The 12-year-old sister (who looks no more than 8 or 9) was carrying her 10-month-old brother on her hip. He was feverish and severely malnourished, and I took them to the children's hospital, where he was admitted immediately for his kwashiorkor malnutrition and infection. Because anyone who is hospitalized in this country needs a family member to stay with them to tend to daily needs (there is no nursing care as we know it) and because these children had no parents or other family available, the girl has been living at the hospital and caring for her brother ever since. The backstory is still being sorted out, but it seems that their parents left for Thailand months ago to find work and haven't been heard from since. They may have been left in the care of a neighbor or an aunt, but the details are fuzzy, but it appears that no one was actually caring for them at all. I've been visiting them at the hospital to check in on them twice a week, providing money for food (hospitals also don't provide meals) and talking with the hospital staff about the progress and discharge possibilities. (Thankfully, this hospital actually does have a social work department, as well as excellent Khmer staff in general.) Since the hospital is only a couple of blocks from the riverside, I thought the girl might enjoy an afternoon out to be a kid and see the action at the water festival, and hospital staff agreed that she could leave the baby for a couple of hours - but she didn't want to leave the baby, so we took him with us. Initially, she insisted on carrying all 12 pounds of him herself, but eventually he became comfortable enough with me to let me to carry him so she could run and explore the action. We met up with the PAGE girls, who took her under their collective wing a bit, and luckily they also provided translation, as this little girl speaks no English at all. A good time was had by all of us, I think, and the only sad part was bringing them back to the hospital, as I would have rather taken them home with me.

     I will just say here that I have a collection of hospital and clinic and healthcare stories to tell - but I haven't felt ready to tell them yet. I guess I need to examine my motives for wanting to share - is it to shock you (which it will) and what would the purpose of that be? Is it to help me process what I've witnessed, and if so, must I do that publicly? I know a few of you have expressed interest in knowing more about the state of healthcare here, so I will share eventually, when I've figured out how to do it right.

     Sunday included an even bigger adventure. The PAGE girls invited to come with them to a "Full Moon Ceremony" on Sunday afternoon, which sounded mysteriously intriguing, so I accepted the invitation. As details began to materialize, I had doubts about whether I should go, but I did and I am so thankful that I did. I was told to meet them at Wat Damnak at 3:00 pm so we could leave together. Only later did I think to ask what time we would return home, and was told "maybe 1:00 am or 2:00 am, because the ceremony is at midnight!" It sounded like a loooong day, and I had no idea what we would be doing for all those hours or even where exactly we would be, but given that I had nothing better to do, off I went.

     And expectations are such a funny thing. Knowing that we were driving out to the countryside somewhere, I brought my book, thinking that I might read on the ride there. Imagine my surprise to discover that we would be riding in the back of a large flat-bed truck, 63 of us, by my count, standing room only. This was one of the famous "Cambodian taxis" I often see on the road, packed to the gills with Khmers swathed in scarves and hats to protect themselves from the sun and the dust. The truck was driven by monks from Wat Damnak, and our convoy included another smaller truck for the rest of the monks to ride in. My fellow passengers included the PAGE girls, a group of children from Wat Damnak's orphanage, a handful of adults, and quite a few other kids and teenagers of unknown origin. Did I mention that there were 63 of us? Thanks to the festival traffic, it took us well over an hour to get out of Siem Reap, a drive that would normally take ten minutes. Outside of town, we continued straight past Angkor Wat, though Angkor Thom temple complex, and into the countryside. The bright green rice fields contrasted with the red dirt road in a way that reminds me of the green and orange of July daylilies at home in Vermont, a combination I've always loved. As the roads got bumpier, we all struggled harder to stay upright, and any change in velocity meant that everyone swayed dangerously forward or backward, threatening to crush the other passengers or knock someone out of the truck completely. There was appropriate shrieking and laughter with each bump and jolt, and kids made a game of reaching out to grab leaves and branches along the tree-lined roads.

Our sweet ride - before we all piled in

They must have paid for first class seating - they could sit down.

Lovely  views along the way

      Two and a half hours later, as dusk fell, we arrived at our destination, the village of Peak Sneng. There in the schoolyard of their junior high school, all was ready for a party.

     I wish I could explain the significance of all that went on, but I am still woefully ignorant, and even when I ask, the explanation is often a bit hard for me to understand, but I can tell you what I saw and what was happening. There were lights strung across the yard with cooking fires, and sacks of rice and enormous mortars and pestles. Throughout the evening, for hours, people roasted the rice a few handfuls at a time, then  pounded it flat. Then it was shaken up in a large flat woven basket to separate the chaff. This dry "flat rice" tastes a bit like popcorn - though the taste would be improved by a little butter and salt - and my understanding is that it's an easy form of rice to carry when cooking opportunities may be limited. (I've also been told the story by a woman I know who as a child, was caring for her baby sister when her family was separated during the Khmer Rouge regime. When she got her hands on some flat rice, she fed it to the starving baby. Unfortunately, not knowing any better, she fed the baby too much and the baby died when the rice swelled in her stomach. She refers to it as "the time I killed my sister.")

     There was live music as well, a band of Khmer musicians playing traditional music on drums and a stringed instrument, which meant there was dancing round and round the schoolyard. Khmers seem to love nothing better than to drag a foreigner into the dancing and watch her practice her Khmer dance moves, so it wasn't long before I was out there with some women who didn't want to take no for an answer. It was the first time I had been to an event where there was plenty of dancing but no beer in sight, which made the leap onto the dance floor a bit more intimidating.

Let there be dancing!

Embarrassing myself for a good laugh

      I split my time between pounding rice, dancing, wishing I had brought more water, and watching the crowd grow as the villagers continued to arrive throughout the evening. I took a few photos, and then the PAGE girls happily took both of my cameras and took hundreds of pictures. Many of the photos are of people I don't know, but they also took an enormous number of monk photos, so my collection has grown without me having to stalk a single monk. In fact, the monks were only too happy to teach me how to pound rice and then compliment my rudimentary efforts. (I did give it plenty of effort, and I have the blister to prove it.) One put it this way, "You very strong, like a man. When the people see you do this, you are very popular, more popular than other people. Also, when you dance - very popular!"  "Popular" and "famous" are words that are often used to describe everyday foreigners here, and while I think I get the gist of their meaning, I assume that they're directly translating a Khmer word that just doesn't translate well.

Looks like a good Facebook profile picture.

I love this guy in his turban and headphones.

     In addition to having my immense popularity pointed out, I was asked frequently if I was happy. I was, and it somehow incrementally increases my happiness every time someone seems to care enough to ask, even when I know it's just a traditional and reflexive greeting. Sometimes, I prefer denial and my own interpretation of things. (Which is actually exactly what some people at work seem to be trying to tell me.... Hmmmmm.)

     By late evening, there were probably 400-500 people there, and I was one of only 3 or 4 white faces in the crowd. This meant that I understood almost nothing that was being said around me for hours, except for catching the word barang ("foreigner") peppered throughout, as people grinned and pointed at me. On several occasions, people came up to speak to me in Khmer, and when I tried to make it clear that I didn't understand a word, they would just speak more slowly and/or loudly, laughing and elbowing their friends. It was an experience I've had so many times that I don't really give it much of a thought any more - we end up with two conversations going on, one in Khmer and one in English, and neither of us understands a word the other says, but there's plenty of smiling and good-natured laughing. My end of the conversation usually sounds something like,. "Sorry, I don't speak Khmer....Yeah, I'm sure you're saying something really interesting, but I'm just an ignorant barang.....Really? That's fascinating, I'm sure...As soon as I have more free time, I promise to resume my study of your language....Yeah, this party is great, isn't it?" This is similar to the conversation I have with our laundry guy every time he stops by to pick up or deliver laundry and sits on the balcony with us for a few minutes.

     The crowd included lots and lots of children, some of whom looked as tired as I felt as the hour got later. I nodded a bit at one point, just sitting on the ground and watching the scene around me. It is so interesting to watch people when you can't understand the words and must rely on a combination of body language and your own imagination. I love watching the teenagers in their same-sex groups watching each other and occasionally flirting in a middle-school sort of way. Boys and girls will hold hands with friends of the same sex, but never touch each other. I got a kick out of the small group of adult men who must have been surreptitiously drinking somewhere in the shadows and then were dancing enthusiastically with each other, occasionally convincing a woman of uncertain character (or a foreigner) to join them. I watched the littlest children nod off in the arms of their mothers or aunts or older sisters, and the older ones run around with apparently boundless energy. I watched the monks, who had probably woken up at 4:00 am and then spent the entire evening pounding rice until their bodies glistened in the heat of the cooking fires, and wondered how tired they must be.

     Close to midnight, with the full moon straight overhead in a cloudless sky, the music and rice pounding wound down and the party moved to another part of the schoolyard. Everyone assembled on mats to listen to the monks pray in their sing-song droning chant. It's something I've heard almost every day here but almost always from a distance, and it was interesting to be in the middle of it, with one of the girls attempting to translate a bit of what was going on. There was a part of the ceremony that involved a row of candles arranged on a horizontal bamboo pole, which was then rotated while the wax dripped onto banana leaves arranged below. This had something to do with predicting (or maybe requesting) rain for the coming year. A bit more praying followed, and then the crowd was served a delicious concoction of flat rice, banana and coconut. There was much merriment as people offered the food to those around them, sometimes even hand-feeding each other directly. A man who had been one of the more enthusiastic dancers offered me a plate of rice and chatted at me in Khmer - the girls explained that he was saying, "We eat together. We are happy together. I have two children and my wife is dead." I have no idea if that's Khmer-style middle-aged flirtation, but I had my suspicions.

     The ride home was less crowded, as we left most of the children behind, and much faster given that there was no traffic in the wee hours of the morning. As we drove back through the temples, the monks in the front seat had to jump out and move barriers from the road, and watching the deserted temples go by in the moonlit night was a rare and wondrous sight.

     By the time we arrived back in Siem Reap, the streets were mostly deserted except for people picking through the tons of garbage that lined the riverside. It was as if we had returned to a different town than one we left in the mid-afternoon. Despite getting home at 2:00 am, exhausted, dirty, windblown and blistered, I wouldn't change a thing.

     What will the coming week bring?

Great Expectations

I suppose that one’s expectations around moving to a foreign country are not so different than one’s expectations about having children.

You go and visit a few times; it looks exciting. You know that if you go to live there, there will be difficult moments, but you think you can probably anticipate and overcome them relatively easily, because after all, you’ve been there.

Kind of like babysitting someone else’s kids for a couple of weekends, and then thinking you know what parenthood will be like. “Yeah, I know having kids can be a lot of work,” you tell yourself. “I’ve done it.”

And then you arrive – in that foreign country or parenthood - and it’s not what you expected. Or it is what you expected, intensified a thousandfold, and complicated by a million things you didn’t expect.

And the most unexpected parts are your own reactions to things, your own feelings, your own struggles to reconcile expectations and reality. And you seek others like yourself who “get” what you're going through, and if you’re lucky, you find a few, and you feel a little less alone and crazy.

And like parenting, life in a new place is punctuated by moments of pure unadulterated joy and discovery, of occasional mind-blowing epiphanies. These moments come unpredictably, which make them all the more rewarding. And in between all those brief endorphin tsunamis, there are long periods of struggle and sweat and confusion and disorientation. 

Sometimes you wonder, “What was I thinking?”

And other times you think, “I’m the luckiest person in the world.” 

And sometimes you don’t think much at all, you just do what needs to be done, whatever you believe that to be.

The current state of my evolution

     I keep thinking to myself that I really should write another blog entry. It’s been a while since the last one, and my laptop keyboard has been been replaced so I can type normally again. In the first weeks here, I furiously wrote long blog posts in my head and only occasionally got around to finishing and posting them. (Maybe someday I’ll post the fragments that I left unfinished as a testament to my strange state of mind in those early days.) Now, my brain has slowed down, and the days and weeks have fallen into a somewhat more predictable rhythm, and therefore I am not thinking quite so much.

    My blog-related thoughts these days are most often just a quick pang of guilt that I haven’t written, sometimes followed by a few minutes at the keyboard during I which I write absolutely nothing because I have no idea what would be interesting for anyone to read about.

     So once again, I will just share some thoughts that drift through my head in what is now our third month in Cambodia.

     In a post from a few weeks ago, I wrote, “My fast-talking, multi-tasking, list-making, agenda-focused thought processes are brought to a grinding halt over and over again - and then there's nothing to do but recalibrate my expectations, adjust my course, roll with the punches, sit back and wait, and/or fly by the seat of my pants..” Re-reading that today, I’m still identifying with that description and I’m aware that I am now a bit further along in that process. And  “recalibrating my expectations” refers partly to day-to-day life here in Siem Reap, but certainly reflects an enormous adjustment process I’ve had within my “job.” Steve has written a little about the challenges of working at the school, and I think I have alluded to the challenges at the clinic, but I’ve purposefully not said much because it didn’t seem fair to share my frustrations with the organization in a public forum. And I still think it wouldn’t be fair, but I feel comfortable saying that in general, I find that I have some philosophical differences with the powers that be and that has been the source of greatest distress for me.

      Despite those challenges, the people at the clinic – the other volunteers and the patients – are delightful. There’s a developing sense of team (which is unfortunately about to be shattered as all three of my Western volunteers are leaving within the next 12 days) and I’ve been there long enough to begin to see some (verrrrrry sloooooow) progress on things that I hoped to accomplish. There is never a dull moment, which is part of what I always said I loved about my last job.

      And the process of understanding the organization itself and my potential place in it has made for some interesting questions I needed to ask myself. What do I think I have to offer and what do I think I need or want in return? What kind of working environment leaves me satisfied and how do I define that satisfaction? Did I think that because I’m a volunteer without a paycheck that every moment of my being here should be fun and stress-free? Do I know as much as I think I know about anything? What’s more enjoyable: the sense of accomplishment after tackling a great challenge, or the sense of accomplishment after solving a small problem?

     So now I forge ahead in a healthier mental state and with a set of re-calibrated expectations, and we’ll see where that goes. While I have differences with the organization itself, I feel committed to the clinic and the patients, so I am not entertaining thoughts of looking for another volunteer opportunity. (I certainly was thinking about that for a little while.) And I will do what I believe to be right in managing the clinic and continue to try to understand the politics involved. And if the powers that be someday decide that I’m in the wrong position, so be it. I’m half-tempted to say, “What have I got to lose?” But actually, that sense of investment I have in the clinic itself now means that I have a lot to lose, so I certainly hope things don’t take any unexpected turns in terms of my “employment.”

     (I will just note here that I purposefully didn’t mention “the organization” by name in this post. Most of you know where we volunteer, but I didn’t want anyone googling that organization to be led to this page.)

Oh, what a tangled web...
(Actually, this is the power line outside our house.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     So every day I get hammock time, and I’m perfecting the art of dozing so that I can wake without being groggy before going back to work in the afternoon. I read a bit (and have a nice backlog of unread books on my Nook to look forward to) and I have long periods where I just lie and stare into space thinking slowly or hardly at all. What an enormous privilege: to have so few lists and tasks and pressing thoughts that I can sit and think of nothing. This was completely impossible only a short time ago. It was part of why I used to use all my vacation time to travel rather than to stay home for a week or two: I couldn’t ever do nothing there and enjoy it, so if I was going to be busy anyway, I might as well be busy somewhere interesting doing something outside of my usual routine.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     I have some great nostalgia for the six weeks between when I left my job at the VNA and when we left the country, as it was a delightful time of slowing down, letting go, sorting through our belongings, drinking wine on the deck every afternoon, seeing friends, and preparing for a great adventure. I remember thinking then that the slowing down process of July and August would be good preparation for the change of pace we would expect to find here. And then our first few weeks here were an absolute whirlwind of finding a place to live and setting up a household from scratch, starting our new positions, making connections with new people, and making a thousand adjustments of various kinds every day. Rather than starting a gradual process of slowing down at home and then continuing it here, we slowed down only to rev up again once we arrived, and then had to slow down again. (That herky-jerky pace is much like how I drive a motorbike so far, having only had a couple of lessons at this point.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     Will I or won’t I buy a motorbike? It’s a question that I think about quite a bit. I have no idea what I will decide in the end. When it’s clear that I should, then I probably will, assuming our budget will allow.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     The money picture is getting clearer, and what is clear is that we spend too much on food. Eating out can be cheap, but there are lots of opportunities to meet friends out for dinner and then we sometimes splurge on a meal that ends up costing us $20-30 for the two or three of us. It adds up quickly, as does the cost of the familiar foods we sparingly treat ourselves to when we go to the supermarket. (This includes ice cream, milk for my coffee, butter, an occasional small piece of mediocre cheese, and nacho chips.) So we’ll eat at home more, which will be easy considering Steve is back in action in the kitchen now that he feels better, and that will save significant money. 

Grilled frog, fish, chicken, and other...things.

     The rent and utilities (electricity, water, trash collection, internet) cost about $400 per month in total, which is ridiculously cheap for the fantastic house we’re living in, so no corners to be cut there. The remaining small percentage of our expenses include bottled water and beer, laundry, and (gulp) our housekeeper. We’ve asked ourselves whether we should give up that ridiculous luxury, but continue to tell ourselves that we don’t really miss the money much and it means a lot to her, so we can’t stop what we’ve started. (Also, I revel in the knowledge that I haven’t cleaned a bathroom since we arrived.) Another occasional cost is transportation, though our need to pay for tuktuk rides has been dramatically reduced by the fact that we’re getting better at carrying big loads on our bicycles, and that there’s a tuktuk driver (Sovann) living in our house, though we try not to abuse that convenience.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     Speaking of Sovann, he and Jaz soldier on with their complicated cross-cultural relationship. I won’t say much more about that except that when all is well, it’s a joy having both of them here, and when things are challenging, it affects us all. 


     Part of what I love about having him here is the opportunity to learn more about his life experiences and worldview. He's charming and thoughtful and funny. He holds a lot of very traditional and superstitious beliefs, some of which are part of his charm, and some of which are just fascinatingly bizarre to me. I know it must be strange for him to be living in a house unlike any he’s lived in before, full of strange things and strange food and strange music, with a bunch of foreigners who have strange habits and fascinatingly bizarre beliefs. 


     I wouldn't have predicted that learning to live with running water means that biggest challenge might be remembering to turn it off when you’re finished. 


     He eats with us a little more often now, and has even cooked for us a couple of times, but he still most often just slips away if food is being prepared and goes out to eat at the food stalls. And sometimes he still sits and watches us eat and laughs good-naturedly at how strange we are. 

Lemongrass, garlic, chilis, and duck - Sovann made a delicious lunch for us.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     Speaking of laundry, which I mentioned back there somewhere, we've moved on to version 3.0 of our laundry plan. Because "Three Hours Laundry" still has only one washer and one dryer, but more business, and really should be named "Twenty Seven Hours (If You're Lucky) Laundry" and is all the way across town, we have begun to use a different laundry service in our own neighborhood. We have Sovann to thank for this arrangement, as he was looking for a good place to get his laundry done and negotiated a deal to have it done for $1 per kilo, washed, dried, ironed, and delivered. Pick-up and delivery isn't really necessary considering how close the place is, but the nice man who owns the laundry business seemed eager to offer the service. The challenge (and you knew there would be one, didn't you?) is that the man speaks even less English than I do Khmer. His vocabulary seems to be limited to "Hello, Madame" and "No English" both said with a big grin. With Sovann's help, we exchanged phone numbers and worked out a plan that would involve me calling the laundry man and hanging up before he answered, which would be his signal to come and pick up the dirty laundry from our house. When the laundry was finished, he would call me and hang up to announce the news, and I would call back again and hang up at a time I was home to receive delivery. It works reasonably well - though when I call him to come pick up the laundry (having left it at the bottom of our stairs for easy access) he comes all the way upstairs, uses all of his vocabulary ("Hello, Madame! No English!"), sits down on the balcony and stares at us happily for a few minutes before getting up to leave. It really seems easier for me to just drop it off on my way to work...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

One of my new favorite business names: "The Ceviliz Bunny Collection"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     I continue to have this nagging feeling that I’m repeating things here that I’ve written previously. Did I just think about it a lot, or actually write it? If I wrote it, did I actually post it for others to read? Did I mention it on Facebook or in this blog? This blog needs a better search feature because I’m too lazy to go back and read everything I’ve already written. Apologies again for repeating myself, which I know I’ve said before!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     We’re beginning to think about taking a long weekend to go away somewhere if we can find a cheap option. There are parts of Cambodia we want to see, but my inclination right now is to look for cheap flights to Singapore or somewhere else outside the country, just to freshen my perspective. Even Bangkok, which blew me away with its foreign-ness the first time I visited, would be far more Westernized and familiar to us than our day-to-day lives here.

     And we do crave some familiarity at times. Calls to and from friends and family are always fun, recent photos of people at home are a treat, and emails with news of the mundane details of life in the U.S. make a lovely start to the day while sipping coffee on the balcony. I’ve slowly signed off lots of email lists that had no relevance to my life here, but I continue to read Jericho’s Front Porch Forum and occasionally peruse the Free Press or Seven Days online. We were amused to find that the Phnom Penh Post English version has a weekly insert called “7 Days” which focuses a bit on the arts and music in Phnom Penh.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     I still have not re-started the Khmer lessons I gave up on so quickly in September. I feel like I have much more mental energy for them now, but I’m also enjoying watching the process of picking up bits and pieces of language from my everyday life. I kind of suck at it really, and it’s incredibly slow, but it’s less stressful for me at this point. I hope that at some point, the time will be obviously right to put in more formal effort again, and I’ll look forward to that when it arrives. In the meantime, my very limited vocabulary includes numbers, some illness-related terms and names of body parts, some basic greetings, and the Khmer word for “cilantro.” (I have no idea why the word for cilantro has stuck when so many other more useful words have come and gone from my memory. I would gladly trade “cilantro” for the phrase “See you tomorrow.”) In the meantime, I heartily enjoy conversing in English with Khmer people who have gone to all the trouble to learn my language and I’m in awe of their skills. I am also sometimes amused by their choice of vocabulary, as they sometimes have been taught very strange things indeed. One friend insisted that he was taught that a man who cheats on his wife is called “an irregular boy.” And several people are quite certain that the U.S. has 52 states, “because of two new ones, Alaska and Hawaii!”  Clearly that was printed in some Khmer geography textbook, because it’s pretty common knowledge around here. I also enjoy listening to the young Khmer translators in the clinic practicing their pronunciation when there’s free time without any patients, repeating together, “Constipation. Con-sti-pa-tion. Constipation.” It only got more amusing when they moved on to, “Vaginal discharge. Va-gin-al dis-charge…” All those consonant blends are such a challenge…

     One of our translators told me one day, “You are famous in Cambodia.” I was most confused by this, and we eventually worked out that he meant that I smile a lot and that people here notice (and apparently comment on it.) Not quite my definition of “famous,” but I enjoyed the intended compliment.

     I haven’t stopped wondering what else local people notice and comment on about us. Maybe very little or nothing at all, but I imagine they occasionally make internal observations about who we are and why we’re here. I imagine we’re all making some pretty crazy assumptions about each other with some frequency.

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Mango-colored sunset seen from the balcony.

    It has taken me most of the afternoon to write this entry (thanks to that slowing of thought processes and a handful on interruptions), and now the sun has set, the bugs are gathering around the lights on the balcony (there’s been a recent hatch of some kind of non-biting but annoying little somethings), and it’s time to think about some dinner. I’ll bring this to a close, but I’m leaving you all with an assignment, which is to give me an assignment. Write and tell if there’s something you want to know more about. Then the next time I feel like blogging but worry about boring you, I’ll have a list of things I could write about that would interest at least one reader on that end!

Beginning to warm up for the Water Festival next weekend - boat races and all kinds of fun to look forward to!

Winter has arrived

     It's Sunday morning, and we are wearing socks and sweatshirts and fleece. Every morning for the past few days, the temperature has been 3-4 degrees colder than the day before. Until this week, the average morning temperature was about 80 degrees. When it hit 74, I put on socks. Today, it's 68 and I have goosebumps.

     Of course, if we woke up in Vermont on the last day of October to 68 degrees, we would throw open the windows and run outside barefoot to marvel at the heat, because everything is relative. We were here last year at this same time and I have no memory of it being this cool, though it has been pointed out to me that perhaps our thermostats were still set to "Vermont."  Here, 68 feels downright chilly - though in a perfectly delightful way. Assuming the trends of the last few days continue, the day will warm up nicely and we will be as happy as ever in T-shirts, shorts, and sandals, at least until the sun sets at 6pm and the temperature drops again.

     At this moment, Steve is in our living room watching game three of the World Series while I sit on the balcony (as always) drinking coffee, checking email, and listening to monks chanting at the pagoda down the street. Jaz is still sleeping. Sovann woke up and did his usual morning disappearing act - I suspect he goes out for something to eat and often looking for work if he doesn't already have something lined up. Someday I really should write about the life of a tuktuk driver; it's been pretty interesting to see it from his perspective.

     Last night we went out for a quick cheap dinner and had what we tend to think of as a Khmertastic experience. Jaz was eager to try a a little local place that's been recently renovated because they had what looked like actual couches for seating - and if there's one thing she misses, it's a couch. So off we went to give it a try.

     The new decor was pretty interesting - the walls are painted a deep lavender and there are an impressive number of fake flowers and greenery woven together and dangling from the ceiling. A large flat-screen TV was playing a Khmer program - in the usual style, it was quite melodramatic, involving tears, lovers being torn apart, an idealized Cambodian countryside background with absolutely no garbage, and as an added touch, a long scene involving a lovely young woman vomiting blood and collapsing. The other nice touch were the three clocks on the wall: the clocks were similar sizes but different styles, and each marked with a different place and time. "Phnom Penh: 7:25." "Paris 1:25." "New York: 6:10." Well, the New York clock was off by a bit, but it was a lovely effort. The other wall decor included animal pictures that looked like they might have been ripped from an old calendar, arranged in a row at the top of the wall, snug against the 15-foot ceilings. (At least I think they were animal pictures - at that height, they were quite difficult to see.)

     But the most interesting thing was the ordering. The waitress put two menus on the table, and only after a few minutes did we realize that they were two completely different menus (both marked "Lunch") rather than two of the same menu. After passing them around a bit and feeling pleased about the prices (almost every dish was 8000 Riel, or $2), we made our decisions and waved the waitress back to take our order. I ordered first. "No have." Oh, OK. Tried again, pointing at my second choice. "No have." Really? Eventually, she took the menu from me and scanned through it, pointing out "Have" for about three items out of 20. Well, now that my choices were narrowed down, I chose from the "have" menu, as did everyone else. Within a few minutes, two of the four of us were informed, "No more have" and allowed to choose again. Food eventually arrived, though two of the dishes were nothing we had ordered, one was the worst example I've ever seen of a traditional Khmer dish called loklak, and Jaz's sophisticated palate found the rice to be substandard. Well, we consoled ourselves, at least it was a cheap meal.

     Except that the bill came to $15, which made no sense. Thanks to having our ever-helpful housemate and translator, we were able to get an explanation: "The menu has the wrong price." We laughed (as one does here), paid the bill, and vowed not to return. Jaz and I mourned the changes, as the place previously had the best iced coffee and cashew chicken dish in town. I would trade knowing the current time in Paris anytime for that iced coffee...

     By contrast, we've had some excellent meals this week - steak and pork-stuffed squid at "Mr. Grill", fried spicy duck with lemongrass cooked for us right in our own kitchen, and various noodle and rice dishes here and there. Now and then Steve creates delicious stir-fries from fresh local ingredients and whatever is left over from the previous day's lunch, and when we need a taste of home, we make nachos or a good old peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

Grilled frog stuffed with pork...

   On my list of things to do this week:

• Learn three new Khmer words every day and actually remember them 
• Take my computer in to see if the keyboard can be fixed (wish me luck)
• Spend some time every day in the hammock with my book (I'm getting pretty good at this)
• Maintain newfound healthy perspective on "work"
• Hide the Pledge before the housekeeper comes so she won't use it on the windows any more
• Buy marshmallows so as to be prepared the next time the neighbors start burning the trash 

    

What's on your list this week?

    

Please enjoy this little glimpse into Cambodian current events.

I present you with some headlines and police reports from the local newspaper. 

 Spirits blamed as girls faint in Cambodia

Teachers of 10 teenage girls who collapsed one after another at their rural Cambodian school blamed the mysterious ailment on angry spirits on Saturday.

The girls, aged between 14 and 18, were treated in hospital after fainting but doctors could not ascertain why the youngsters were struck down, said Ruos Lim Chhee, head of the high school in Pnov, northern Cambodia.

He said that all of the girls were found to be healthy, with no signs of food poisoning, although two were a little low on glucose.

"We are afraid we are under a spell because we didn't offer any traditional dancing and music to the spirits on the opening day this year," he said.

"But we have just offered fruits, boiled chickens and wine to the spirits today, and we hope the students will get better and the spirits will take care of us."

Mil Khim, a teacher who witnessed the string of incidents on Thursday, said one of his students started to complain of chest pains early in the morning and then suffered convulsions before falling unconscious.

"The strange phenomenon lasted only a few hours, as eight seventh graders and two from eighth and ninth grade fainted subsequently," he said.

Cambodians in rural areas often believe supernatural forces are behind unexplained events.

"We think that perhaps the spirits are angry because the doctors, teachers and even police found no trace of poison or physical weakness," said district governor, Pech Sophea.

© 2010 AFP

From the Phnom Penh Post Police Blotter:

Chicken farmer pays for not watching his back 
A 21-year-old man was arrested last week after stabbing a man in the back during the Pchum Ben festival in Kandal province’s Ang Snuol district, police said. They said the victim had punched the suspect, a chicken farmer, as the latter was showing the ladies his dance moves. Enraged, the suspect reportedly grabbed a knife and stabbed the man in the back. The victim was immediately sent to hospital with “serious wounds”, and the suspect fled the scene. However, he was later arrested and sent to the provincial court. 

Man threatens to raze house for lack of food
Police have arrested a 42-year-old man in Kandal province’s Ang Snuol district who threatened to set fire to his own house because his wife hadn’t cooked rice for him. After the woman returned home from work, she apparently did not begin cooking fast enough for her husband, who became incensed and threatened to set the house on fire. A neighbour immediately called police. Officials said they had educated the man. 

Possessed man takes power drill to own neck
A 28-year-old man suspected of being possessed by ghosts killed himself by taking a drill to his neck in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district on Thursday. The victim’s mother said that her son had been possessed “for nearly two years” and that at times he acted “crazy”, destroying furniture in his house. She said that on the day he died he held her in a tearful embrace before he went off and killed himself with the drill. A witness said the man drilled his throat and cut his neck until he died. 

Drunken man assaults wife for not listening
Police arrested a 44-year-old man accused of breaking his wife’s leg in a drunken domestic quarrel in Battambang province on Friday. The man was said to have been extremely drunk when he returned to his house, were he picked a fight with his wife, accusing her of never listening to him. The wife locked herself in the kitchen, but the husband managed to break down the door and snap one of her legs. 

Death Stems From Mistaken Identity
A 20-year-old factory employee is dead after he was assaulted by a group of “gangsters” in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district Saturday, according to police. Police said the man was talking on the phone on the street when the gangsters pounced. The man was sent to hospital but died after he arrived. Police eventually arrested one of the suspects, who told police his group had confused the victim for a rival gangster. Police then surmised that the man died of “gangster confusion”. 

Long-haired Pupils Shorn By Police
On Tuesday morning the police in Battambang province called two seventh-grade students aged 15 and 16 at Netr Yang High School who were standing in front the police station to come in and cut their hair, which police said was too long. The police said they could not stand seeing students looking so bad. Teachers said they did not dare say anything to the students even though they also disapproved of their hair length because they were afraid they would be attacked by the students and that they might be forced to jump out of the classroom through the window. 

Police hope to reform ‘gangster’ students
Police in Kandal province’s Kien Svay district on Monday arrested eight “gangsters” accused of terrorising their village. Some of the gangsters had been accused by neighbours of indulging in “bad moral conduct”, and police said that although they “did not commit any crime or kill anyone”, they had “always threatened and scared residents”. Police said they had given “advice and education” to the group before releasing them, in the hope that they would prove themselves capable of reform “because they are students”. 

Finding equilibrium.

     Ongoing keyboard problems have kept me from writing. All efforts so far to fix the problem have been fruitless, and the external keyboard I bought to plug into the laptop is the soft silicone kind and doesn't work so well either. So every email or other bit of typing I do is extraordinarily slow and laborious.

     I suppose it's a metaphor for so many other things here. Things are rarely as simple or straightforward as I think they ought to be, for a whole variety of reasons. Language problems, cultural gaps, a breakdown of some sort of equipment: something always makes everything more complicated than expected. My fast-talking, multi-tasking, list-making, agenda-focused thought processes are brought to a grinding halt over and over again - and then there's nothing to do but recalibrate my expectations, adjust my course, roll with the punches, sit back and wait, and/or fly by the seat of my pants.

     And so I am learning to slow down. Which, come to think of it, is part of why I wanted to be here: to slow my life down. I find it more difficult than I anticipated, but I'm learning. I've tried to make sure I get some hammock time every day, and I find that lying there looking at the sky and doing absolutely nothing is quite lovely. I'm learning to sometimes say "I'm busy right now" when someone calls and wants to come over, because people want to come over quite often.

     The weeks go by quickly. Things at the clinic are crazy most of the time, but I'm beginning to find my groove.  I find myself beginning to recognize a word or two when listening to people speak Khmer. The ride to work on my bicycle is so routine now that I listen to my iPod on the way to keep things interesting. The floods have receded and we've had a few days without rain. Jaz's friend with the broken arm is still lying on the floor of his house with bamboo and rags tied around his arm. Three Hours Laundry now takes more like 18 hours since they've been getting new customers but still have only one washer and one dryer. I think the housekeeper used Pledge on the windows again this week. We got our first electric bill, and now we know how much it costs to make all that ice. I discovered that the bill for our internet comes via a text message on my cell phone. We buy bread most mornings from the lady who comes on her bicycle with the basket of warm baguettes, and we buy hot banana fritters from another lady who fries them up on the side of the road down at the corner. The sunflowers I planted in a pot are coming up nicely.

     That about sums things up. I suppose we're finding more things to be routine, and it's interesting to note how comforting that can be. Not that there's any lack of novelty, but we seem to be finding more equilibrium.