Days Since Swear-in: 490
Days Until Projected COS: 208 [1]
It’s been 2014 the world over for a while now, so it is altogether fitting and proper that I wrap up my retrospective of the first 365 days of my Peace Corps experience [2]; Part I described my travels around Cambodia and what’s still on my to-do list for the next seven months and change [3], Part II was a bit of a “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” screed. We finish WKOYHIB? with a frank discussion of the successes and the challenges that I’ve experienced or endured during my time in Cambodia, bookended by a couple of amusing anecdotes that could easily be told around a poker table with a cold beer and beginning with, “So, there I was...”
Without further ado, the shocking conclusion.
2. Expiring either on July 13 or September 7 of 2013, depending on when you’d like to begin counting.
3. It now looks like my future travel plans have significantly changed.
The Stupidest Thing that I Said
At the RTTC, I deal with two different populations of students: those who will become English teachers, and those who will become teachers of other subjects. All of the instruction of the English methodology courses is in English, while there is some Khmer when I teach ELD classes to the other trainees. It has been my habit, upon first meeting a new class of English trainees, to give an introduction of myself in Khmer. In my mind, it is an implicit acknowledgment of the difficulty of the task facing the trainees, which is teaching classes while speaking a foreign language. It lets them know that I empathize with the challenges of learning a second language [4]. Likely, they are slightly intimidated by my presence; with a native-English speaker around, they become self-conscious about their own English ability, and my immense physical stature and dashing good looks probably don’t help them feel any more at ease. As such, it also serves as an ice-breaker. I’ve gotten the speech down pretty good, so I don’t really make any mistakes in it unless I go off-script and try to explain that I teach “English methodology” (wi tee saah pee-a-sah Anglay) in Cambodia and that, in addition to history (prowat wi-chee-ah), I also teach “English literature” (uk sor saah pee-a-sah Anglay) in the United States. But, if I do make a mistake, it adds to the whole “Spaceship Earth: We’re all in this together” esprit de corps [5].
4. Actually, Khmer would be my fourth attempted language. After four years of Latin between 8th and 11th grade, I gave Spanish a crack at the junior college (for a few weeks) before coming here and learning Khmer. And, of course, I dabble in some English.
5. For the sake of parallel construction, I will note that during my introduction to classes of non-English trainees, I speak only English. Not only is this because I am modeling how they will introduce themselves to the rest of the class, but also because they need to practice listening to English and get used to my particular accent.
So, there I was...early last December, meeting class M1 for the first time. When I kick off my speech with Joom reap suah and a sompeh (the formal version of “Hello” and ceremonial bow), there is general amusement and giggling. When I continue on in Khmer with Knyom ch’mooah Nick, jia joon jee-ut Ahmayrik. Knyom twer-kaa owie Peace Corps… [6], the amusement and giggling transitions into an awed hush, which, at that time, included my co-teacher because I think he had not previously been aware that I was mildly proficient in his native language. I wrap up the Khmer portion with “I’m 30 years old [7], I’m not married [8], I don’t have any kids [9],” etc., explain my education and background in English, then ask if there are any questions. A young man, one of my oldest students at the ripe age of 25, with a shaved head and no eyebrows [10] stands up and asks, obviously perplexed, “Yes, thank you. WHY CAN YOU SPEAK KHMER SO CLEARLY?”
6. My name is Nick, I’m an American. I work for Peace Corps…
7. True at the time.
8. Still true today.
9. True then and still true now…as far as I know.
10. He was one of three students in this class who had recently finished stints as monks before enrolling at the RTTC.
Well, I started, it’s very important to Peace Corps that wherever their Volunteers are, they learn about the language and the culture. So when we first came here, we studied Khmer for about two months, and I still study Khmer now. I live around here with a Khmer family, and I eat Khmer food, too.
Doesn’t sound so stupid yet, right? Wait for it. I continued:
I’m just like you guys, except instead of growing up in Cambodia, I grew up in the United States.
11. At the time, it had only been about five months.
12. Recently, as part of a larger “hot pot” soup meal, I ate boiled brain which I’m pretty sure came out of a pig.
13. I’m not saying “white is right,” but I don’t think anyone would argue that caucasian families tend to have easier times in American society than those of minority status, the last five years of the first African-American presidency and the Supreme Court’s decision that racism is over aside.
14. At least they used to back in my day. It’s pretty hard to measure those things with a Scantron, so maybe they’ve fallen by the wayside in my period as an unsigned free agent.
15. Rather, just the 18 months I’ve been in Cambodia.
I felt sufficiently embarrassed once “I’m just like you guys” escaped from my lips, and I’ve continued to feel badly enough about it since to have it stick with me and motivate me to perform this minor mea culpa.
And that, brothers and sisters, was the stupidest thing that I said during my first year of Peace Corps service. At least the stupidest thing that I said that was also committed to memory.
My Biggest Pet Peeve
Of course, other irritations have cropped up over time, so a better heading for this section might be “What’s Bothering Me Lately.” And as far as that goes, there are two things...so it isn’t so much my biggest pet peeve as it is two separate pet peeves that are easily as annoying as each other; one on a daily basis, the other on special occasions.
I’ve already mentioned that this house is typically not a quiet house. My host parents are in their late 50s, and have four grown children. The three oldest of these grown children are married, and each has two children [16]. These families all have their own places to live in the same area as the house where I live, but they are often here. Far more frequently, the grandchildren are here, I suppose for daycare purposes; generally, they are unsupervised [17] and making “heavy metal concert” amounts of noise.
16. Technically, the older brother only has one child right now, but his wife is pregnant and should give birth relatively soon. She’s looked very pregnant for the last couple of months.
17. Just before Christmas, I was eating dinner at the table (alone) when the almost-four-year-old walked out of one of the bedrooms and put a kitchen knife on the table. A few minutes later, after I finished washing my dishes and walked back through the dining room, the two-year-old had gotten ahold of an entirely different knife than the knife that the almost-four-year-old had, and was trying to cut in half a straw that was attached to the highly artificially sweetened, brightly colored drink she was consuming. Since nobody else was around to watch her, I took the knife from her and put it in the middle of the table where she couldn’t reach it, then walked into my room shaking my head and muttering.
If that weren’t enough, we’ve also got neighbors very close to us on either side. On the west is a family headed by a goldsmith who likes to party. My host brother colloquially refers to it as “a happy house” [18]. On the other side, about three feet from my bedroom windows, live even more young children who, if you can believe it, are even louder than the ones that frequent this house. These kids next door go all the way up to “11.”
18. I guess it probably would be a happy house, if you weren’t next to it while you were trying to help improve the quality of education in this country or read or write or study Khmer or, you know, SLEEP.
These are things that I’ve come to terms with, mostly because they’re entirely out of my control. However, the consistency with which multiple television sets blare throughout the house is a new point of friction. It generally begins from one of the rooms next to me at 5:30 or 6 in the morning with what would be called “the news” in a country with a free press. It continues throughout the morning with K-Pop music videos and Disney Jr., depending on what the children are in the mood for, then there’s a quiet period from about 10 to 11 am. Fortunately, I’m usually at work around that time, so I don’t die from the shock of seeing a television fallen into disuse. When I eat my lunch alone, I decide whether the tv is on. Sometimes I try to get caught up by watching the BBC World News; sometimes, I happen upon a soccer match that looks interesting, or in far rarer cases, an ice hockey or baseball game [19]. For awhile, I was able to catch reruns of “Man vs. Wild” on Discovery Channel Asia, and if I’m real lucky, I can find a WWE pay-per-view being broadcast for free about three weeks late on Thai cable. The past few months, however, when it’s up to me, the television has more than likely been off. Since I’m eating by myself, I don’t do it to facilitate any kind of conversation, but rather because I find the absence soothing. So I sit there, eating my rice and dried/fried fish and bowl of various boiled organic matter, staring out the windows at the corrugated tin roofs of the rest of the neighborhood and the interstitial palm trees. Once I finish, the family comes in to eat, and the tv is back on with Chinese soap operas which have been dubbed over into Khmer. That will typically continue throughout the afternoon as various family members cycle in and out of the living room hammocks for nap time, or it gets switched back to K-Pop videos or Disney Jr. for the grandchildren. There tends to be another sliver of time in the late afternoon/early evening when it’s off again, but it comes back with a vengeance at dinner time and typically continues until around 10:30 or 11:00 PM. So, one thing that’s bothering me lately: the omnipresence of blaring televisions. If I didn’t want to watch baseball, hockey, WWE, the Food Network, and Jeopardy! on a regular basis when I finished my service, I’d strongly consider banning television from my own (future) house [20].
19. Like “two times each in a year and a half” rare.
20. Although with the way the recently announced WWE Network is revolutionizing the future of television, I might end up with my cake and the ability to eat it, too.
You may recall that I recently went through a stretch of a few weeks without the service of my own Peace Corps-issued mountain bike. When I wanted to get somewhere near or less-near, I walked. Tuk-tuk and moto-dop drivers hang around near some of the hotels, because they figure visiting tourists, whether foreign or Khmer, will probably want a lift somewhere. Not terrible logic. However, when you walk by them, they will see if you want a ride.
First of all, because of PC-C safety regulations, I can never ride a moto, so that those guys even speak to me is a constant point of irritation. Even if I wanted a ride, and even if I wanted to pay for it, they couldn’t help me. I generally refuse to pay for tuk-tuks in and around the town because it is patently unnecessary. With an investment of minimal effort and not much more time, I can get to pretty much any place I want to go around here on foot. It also gives me a chance to “explore” the area and take in things that I probably wouldn’t see or notice if I was cruising around at top speed on my usual routes with my bike. For instance, even though my bike is now fixed [21], I was taking a new route that I had discovered which consists of very quiet, nicely paved streets and almost no traffic. I was getting closer and closer to a field set up as a volleyball court, and I noticed a big crowd of people. But they weren’t playing volleyball; they were gathered around in a circle, some sitting, some standing. As I got real close, I began to make out what they were doing. It was a cock fight. Two roosters fighting each other, maybe to the death. Animal cruelty aside, it was an interesting thing to happen upon, and I wouldn’t have happened upon it if I hadn’t found this new route by making a walk in a different direction. Aside from all of this, the tuk-tuk drivers here (Cambodia) will absolutely screw you on prices, even though we Volunteers can speak the language and know how to bargain. It costs twice as much money to get from the center of Phnom Penh to the airport on the outskirts of town, perhaps 5 or 6 km away, as it does to travel the 300 km between Battambang and Phnom Penh by bus. Go figure. Anyway, I tend not to pay for transportation around here.
21. Which was far more of an ordeal than I could ever have imagined...two patch jobs in one day, only to see it blow again a week later, necessitating a new tube, which is easily two sizes too small for my tire.
That doesn’t stop the guys from asking, despite a recent victory I had during my “wandering the town” phase. Walking to a local cafe where I needed a) peace and quiet, b) high speed internet, and c) hot tea and a snack, I walked past one of the hotels where these guys congregate. One of them started to harass me, “You, sir? Tuk-tuk?” One of his colleagues, who was reclining in the passenger part of his own tuk-tuk stopped him and told him in Khmer, “No, he doesn’t want a ride,” because I’ve walked past that guy maybe a hundred other times, and he knows that I don’t want a ride. I consider that a significant development.
These roadside guys are downright civil when compared to the scum-of-the-earth tuk-tuk drivers who pass their days lurking at bus stations waiting for passengers. They will peer through the windows of the bus as it pulls up, specifically looking for Westerners and foreigners. Why? Because they know they will be able to charge the foreigners more, either because of their naiveté or their perceived largess or both. Like a drop of blood in the water for sharks, the appearance of a white face in the bus window triggers a frenzy among the drivers, who crowd by the door in such numbers that it nearly prevents the egress of the poor souls inside. The usual refrain: “You, you? Tuk-tuk?”
After a long bus ride, which is always longer than it seems like it reasonably should be due to the poor road conditions and excessive stops and too-small seats, I’m tired and irritated to begin with. Still, I summon the human decency to politely say “No” the first 47 times I’m harassed by a tuk-tuk driver. Sadly, that isn’t enough to get you through the crowd and on your way. The 48th, 49th, 50th time...my voice increases in volume and my manner increases in curtness. Typically, the saga ends after a few well-placed, exasperated shouts of “NO!!!”
But, it doesn’t always. One such exception happened after I returned from my recent trip back to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. My bike was safely secured at a near-by hotel, so I never had any intention of hiring a tuk-tuk. But, the scene was as I described it above. After 50 times of saying “no,” first politely, then less politely, then shouting, I thought I was home free. I walked up the sidewalk away from the bus, closer to the intersection at the front of the station and, in my mind, clearly walking away. But I hear a voice behind me, “Tuk-tuk, sir?” I ignored it and kept walking, because that should send a pretty clear signal. The voice continued. “Sir? Tuk-tuk?” Sometimes if you don’t reinforce behaviors that irritate you with attention, they will stop...so with my level of fury rising steadily, I tried to ignore him and keep moving. Then, his arm grabbed me, and arrested my forward momentum, no small task since I’m roughly two times the size of your average Cambodian male.
Honestly, I think the gall took me by surprise, and I was still for just long enough for this bozo to position himself between me and my goal: crossing the road and ever-loving freedom. So there he is, in my face, after having successfully stopped me from leaving, his big chance. Perhaps I just didn’t hear him the previous seven times, and perhaps all that was keeping me from hiring a driver was the lack of persistence from those who got the message after 50 rounds of “no.” But before he can even speak, I snap. This was the ultimate insult, I’d never imagined it would get this far.
The look on my face must’ve been enough to alert him to his grievous error in tactics, because once he got in my line of sight, he immediately backed up several steps [22]. I put my hand out in front of me, palm out and fingers pointing up, which, when not made by a statue of the Buddha, is the international sign for “stop what you’re doing right now or I’m going to knock out the few tobacco-stained teeth that are left in your head.” I’m hungry, I’m tired, I’m irritated, and this guy crossed the line. I break the silence, because there’s no turning back now:
Look...I don’t need a fucking tuk-tuk! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!
The near-by bread lady audibly gasps, meaning that body language and tone were able to compensate for any language barrier. The driver is taken aback, but after a stunned silence, he chuckles a few times, because that’s what you do when you’re Khmer and you’re uncomfortable. “Ok,” he says meekly, before he slithers back to the busses, hoping to find another target.
I cross the street, and immediately regret losing my temper. For one thing, blowing up like that is looked down upon in Cambodian culture because you “lose face.” What’s more, with my terrible luck, the next time that I actually need a tuk-tuk this guy will probably be the only driver around and either won’t take me where I want to go, or charge an (even more) exorbitant rate. Besides all of that, violence begets violence, and in a country riddled with seething cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, you never know who might snap after being dealt with like that.
But I didn’t get stabbed and I didn’t get shot, and as far as I know, I haven’t seen that guy around town since. Maybe I lost face with the bread lady and the brotherhood of tuk-tuk practitioners, but I won’t be too broken up if he doesn’t invite me to his sweet sixteen party. At the time, it seemed justified, and maybe, just maybe, he won’t go around putting his hands on foreigners next time.
This one story is exemplary of what has lately become my absolute least favorite thing about living in Cambodia.
Successes and Challenges
Success #1: organizing a workshop on classroom management for the Year Two English Major trainees last year [24] with my site mate, K5 Vanessa.
23. VRF is the Volunteer Reporting Form, and is used to organize quantitative and qualitative data from Volunteers in the field in order to give it to post staff, Peace Corps-Washington, and eventually, the United States Congress, who funds or defunds us in annual budgets.
24. These trainees are now teachers in Cambodian schools.
As she and I observed the trainees during their peer teaching [25], it became obvious that classroom management was an area where they a) did not have much confidence, and b) needed a lot of additional instruction and guidance. The conceptual framework was largely mine, and I did a good amount of research into positive techniques for behavioral management. The workshop had two portions: “Before You Teach,” which dealt with things like establishing classroom rules, learning student names, and maintaining a positive attitude, and “While You Teach,” which showed the trainees practical techniques they could use to deal with the most common misbehaviors in Cambodian schools without resorting to what are here traditional methods [26]. I’m not going to get “M. Barnett-level data nerd” on you, but after the workshop, 63% more trainees responded to a hypothetical situation of minor student misbehavior with a positive method, and the level of trainees who felt neutral or unconfident in their own ability to manage their classroom dropped from 62% to 24%. Before the workshop, 0 trainees felt highly confident about classroom management; afterwards, 13.5% did. So, pretty damned successful, if I don’t say so myself [27].
25. In which they teach mock lessons to their methodology classes then receive feedback.
26. Hitting, yelling at, or otherwise embarrassing/harming students.
27. The day after Christmas, I conducted the same workshop for the trainees who were Year One students last year and did not have the benefit of attending the session discussed here. Since Vanessa has finished her service and returned home to adult life, I had to do it by myself, which was a challenge. But the numbers look encouraging once again.
28. She retired at the end of last academic year, and we now have a new director.
29. Not pertinent to my co-teachers, but my favorite reason for classes being cancelled last year was so the trainees could “practice walking in a parade” to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Red Cross. This year, one co-teacher had to leave before a class because his brother had fallen out of a coconut tree.
As school wound down last July, there was a lot of uncertainty about the stop date, mostly because the elections for the National Assembly were being held on July 28. As that date approached, more and more classes were cancelled for various events: workshops, meetings, exams, etc. Less and less of the teachers were coming to work. Word finally came down that the last day of classes would be Wednesday, July 24...and my co-teacher and I had an ELD class to teach that day at 7 AM. We met outside the front gate of the school at about 6:55 while the flag ceremony and the morning announcements were concluding. All of the students were lined up in formation inside, and all of the administrators were there. After all of that finished up, my counterpart and I walked into the school and noticed that there was not the usual array of motos parked near the main office. There were no other teachers in the lounge area; in fact, my partner and I were the only two teachers who showed up that morning. While my RTTC already had a more professional tone than the average school and my co-teacher was already a dedicated teacher, I’d like to believe that I’ve had a positive impact in reinforcing that behavior while also providing him with a role model of how a professional educator in a successful, developed country behaves. To me, that we were the only two teachers who showed up on the last day of classes was a tremendous success, and it made me feel very proud of the work that I had done that first school year when there wasn’t too much else to hang my hat on.
Challenge #1 (of a set of three from my first six months): the cultural conflict between the American tradition of “direct communication” and the Khmer tradition of indirectness with the desire to “save face.” My ambitious plan of working as a resource specialist with the five different English trainers at the RTTC went over like the Gobblety Gooker, mostly due to the fact that 4 out of 5 of them would/could not find any time in their busy schedules to meet with me to reflect on their practices, identify areas of improvement, and listen to feedback. Granted, they all have outside jobs to help support themselves and their family because you can’t get it done on a public school teacher’s salary alone. However, I find it highly unlikely that they could not find a free half-hour in the entire week, especially when my own schedule was essentially wide-open. I believe that some of the trainers were using this as an excuse to avoid co-planning because they would have to change their traditional practices and their rather lax preparation procedures [29]. In those cases, I would’ve much rather have been directly told by the trainers that they weren’t interested, rather than them paying lip service to my presence and hoping I’d eventually stop showing up for their classes.
29. The English Methodology classes have a teacher’s manual that script lessons out step-by-step; some trainers don’t look at the lessons until they walk in the door to teach it, which leaves no time to develop materials or alter activities that are not effective.
Challenge #2 (from the second six months): convincing my co-teachers to try new things. This was at the forefront of my mind when we all gathered for MST in mid-September, so many of my colleagues got to hear about it in great detail then. It’s the paradox of Peace Corps service, especially in Cambodia, which is a very conservative culture: Peace Corps was invited here by the national government in order to help improve the quality of English education. To improve things, I believe it’s necessary to change methods and try different things. As the old saying goes, “if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.” However, my co-teachers are often wary of changing anything that they’ve been doing for the past however many years they’ve been teaching. I’ve heard an array of explanations for this [30]:
30. But not from them, probably because of that whole “indirectness” thing I already mentioned.
- Public school teachers make $150 a month, if they’re lucky. That’s not enough to support a family, so they teach private lessons or at private schools. It’s more important, economically, to put time and effort into the private classes, so what’s happening at the public school gets put on “auto pilot” and suffers;
- Since the 1990s, after the Vietnamese left and the civil war got ironed out, things in Cambodia have been pretty peaceful and stable. It hadn’t been that way for a long time prior, so why muck it up now by trying to change everything? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it;
- As a people that adhere to the teachings of Theravada Buddhism, Cambodians believe that their life is the way it is because that’s the way it should be. You shouldn’t expect more than you have, so why would you put in time and effort to change things? After all, the root of suffering is desire;
- New things are scary, and there’s a chance you could fail. Saving face is important, and you can’t save face if you try something new and look foolish because it doesn’t work [31];
- The Ministry of Education, the same one that asked Peace Corps to come here to improve things, has a centralized curriculum. If we do things differently than how the Ministry says, we’ll get “off-topic” or possibly get in trouble for straying from the gospel of the national curriculum. Catch-22: Help us improve our education system, but do it exactly the same way we’ve been doing it for twenty years;
- There are really no incentives (recognition, awards, rewards, etc.) for public school teachers that are committed to being better teachers. I also strongly sense a perception that whether or not a student is successful is up to the student: if a student listens to the teacher, has a neat notebook, and studies hard, they will be successful. The teacher’s job is to be the fount of knowledge, and transmit that knowledge to students via lecture, and as long as they do that, they’re doing their job. This differs completely from the viewpoint of conscientious educators in the United States, where the teacher is considered the largest factor in a student’s success, and a student’s success is largely a reflection of the teacher and their methods [32].
32. Whether or not my pay should be affected by student performance is another issue.
Since my primary job is to train future teachers and make the current teacher trainers better teachers, this represents a considerable challenge. As I’ve realized that most of my counterparts aren’t willing to change, I’ve focused much more intently on working with the trainees. It’s a degree removed, sustainability-wise [33], but over my service, I will have worked with nearly 200 future English teachers in my primary assignment.
33. Because a teacher trainer with improved methods could continuing improving teacher training after I’m gone, which will eventually affect far more Cambodian students, when those new teachers are using improved methods themselves.
What Have I Learned?
Lesson #1, my community: No matter how “integrated” you consider yourself (and believe me, I still consider myself only “somewhat integrated,” and was distinctly less-so six months into my service), there are always going to be things happening around you that you have little awareness of, let alone an understanding of. My example is the Khmer practice of dton dtign, which is itself derived from the French tontine, an annuity where individual shares increase as members die, with the last surviving member eventually receiving the entirety of the income [34]. This was one instance where the Community Assessment Report (CAR) that we were asked to do during PST Phase II [35] was actually useful: when asking my host mom if there were any informal savings groups in the community, she said, “No." Then she thought for a few seconds and said, "…Well, there’s the dton dtign.”
34. You might be familiar with a tontine from the episode of “The Simpsons” in which it’s revealed that Grandpa Simpson entered into a tontine with his Army company, The Flying Hellfish, during World War II. The prize was a collection of precious works of art and other valuables that had been “obtained” by the Nazis. The Hellfish came into possession of these items after clearing out and occupying a castle.
35. A.K.A., our first two months at our permanent site.
In the Khmer version, a group of people make weekly contributions to a pool of money. If a member needs to borrow that week’s contribution, they make a bid at a discount. For instance, if $100 has been collected that week, they can offer to take only $70, essentially making the pool interest once the borrowed amount has been repaid. Once a person borrows money, they are considered “dead,” and must contribute a higher weekly amount. So, the final person has access to a pool of money at a discount, because they are still paying the original weekly contribution. If this is incredibly confusing to you, you aren’t alone, and there’s a strong possibility that I’ve explained the whole thing incorrectly. Anyway, this is a common practice: the women who work in the handicrafts shop downstairs play in a dton dtign, my host brother/Khmer tutor plays with teachers he works with, and the vendors at the market play all the time, pretty much non-stop. There will always be things happening in the community that you don’t understand or even know about because you are not a native member of the community. Lesson learned.
Lesson #2, my project: Reflecting on my first year of working at the RTTC, I realized that I spent much of my time learning how things work in Cambodian schools and trying to understand the underlying causes of the (many) things I feel frustrated by. It was a process of trial-and-error, not so much to find out what I can do to ensure success in my second year, but more so in figuring out which areas I should focus my attention on that would give me a much higher probability of success. In other words, we’ve got a relatively short time to be here, and you can spend it one of two ways: banging your head against the wall trying to change things (or people) that never will change because they aren’t motivated to, or finding the “positive deviants” who are willing to work with you and are willing to push themselves to become better. Although the challenges do exist, it doesn’t mean that we throw our hands up and stop trying. Once we understand more about the challenges, we can begin to figure out how to deal with them effectively. None of this guarantees success this second year, but because I’m being far more strategic about where I’m spending my time and effort, it’s a lot likelier that it will end with successes. As Coach Jeff Brinkley used to say, “All it does is give us a chance.” Lesson learned.
The Most Disturbing Thing that I Heard
So there we were one morning, having breakfast at a haang baiy. We were both about halfway through our respective plates of baiy sa’ach j’rook (rice with pork), when I asked him if the restaurant served coffee. He said they did, and he called one of the workers over and placed an order for an iced coffee without sugar for me. That much, I understood. Then he continued his conversation with the woman, asking a question and getting a negative response that apparently disappointed him. When he finished up and the woman left, I asked, “What was all that about?”
He said that he had ordered my coffee, then asked the waitress if they had any fresh milk. Most of the time, the milk that comes with iced coffee is condensed sweetened milk; in fact, an iced coffee with condensed sweetened milk is referred to, in English, as “Khmer coffee” [36]. So I said, oh they don’t have any fresh milk? “No, they don’t,” he said. “I don’t drink a lot of coffee, but I drink it sometimes at home [37] and I like it with fresh milk.”
36. In Khmer, it’s called cafe tuk dah goa tuk kaak, which literally translates to “coffee with cow breast water and ice.”
37. His wife and her family run a small restaurant out of the front of their house.
I was quiet for a few seconds while I reflected on the fact that fresh milk is incredibly rare in Cambodia. They have cows and they have oxen and they have goats wandering around, but they’re used exclusively as draft animals and possibly meat, I guess. You can buy soy milk from shops and stores, but if you want actual dairy, you pretty much have to go to a Western-style grocery store, and you’re going to pay a pretty riel.
After I completed this thought process, I double-checked and asked if he had fresh milk at home, you know, just to be certain. He said he did. I asked where he gets it, since it’s a rare commodity here.
My wife makes it for me.
To my credit, I accepted this statement without shuddering or retching, in the spirit of the cultural exchange that makes up two-thirds of the three goals of the Peace Corps, and with a healthy dose of relativity. I simply said, “Oh, I see. That’s nice,” and we went back to quietly eating breakfast for a few minutes before he started a conversation on a different subject.
But yes, that was the most disturbing thing I heard during my first year here.
My Favorite Piece of Cambodiana
I live near a relatively large town, as far as Cambodian standards go. It’s not Phnom Penh, which is a large urban center, but it’s definitely not the remote countryside. Most roads are paved, my house has (mostly) constant electricity and running water, people around here speak a good amount of English [38]. But, it’s still Cambodia, and most of Cambodia lives a lifestyle not far removed from what their ancestors of a thousand years ago were doing.
38. One reason my spoken Khmer is not so good.
Even though I’m essentially in the suburbs, we’re not completely removed from country living. Our next door neighbors, the goldsmith with the happy house, raises chickens and hogs. I know this because the roosters and the sows are easily heard from next door. Across the street, a family turned what used to be the neighborhood volleyball court into a cornfield, which is once again thriving after being destroyed by the floods. Wild dogs roam the streets, and cows are a frequent enough sight that I’ve been within a few feet of them while walking to and from school without even noticing their presence. But there’s one thing that still makes me smile after all these months of living in Cambodia.
In my neighborhood, somebody somewhere has a herd of goats. I’ve never seen anybody tending to them, they just kind of wander around the road that leads to the petroleum depot, grazing on grass and whatever garbage has been left piled along the road. One day, after I got to thinking that maybe life in Cambodia wasn’t so unusual after all, I was riding my bike home and found that this herd of goats was completely blocking the dirt road to my house. That’s not something that happens in Newport Beach, if you can believe it.
Often times, they find their way into the relatively secure local elementary school by jumping through the ornamental columns of cement in the retaining wall. They pick through the piles of trash in there for a while before one of them gets spooked and hops back out through the columns back onto the road. Where one goes, they all go, so before long, the entire herd of goats is pouring out through these narrow slots in the wall. They gallop off down the road, they negotiate the moto and diesel truck traffic quite deftly, off to another place to just hang out, doing goat stuff.
No matter how tired I am, how irritated I am, how bad a day I’ve been having, my mood is instantly improved by seeing this herd of goats along the road. I don’t know why I find them so entertaining, but they’re definitely my favorite piece of Cambodiana. My only regret is that I’ve never been able to successfully capture any of this with my camera. Hopefully before I leave, but I’m not confident a photograph could do justice to the overall mood.
If you’ve made it this far, all the way though an unprecedented three-part series, I certainly admire your pluck, your gumption, and your stamina. As a reward, you’ll be among the first to know that the next blog post will (more than likely) be the very exciting Return to the Temples of Angkor, complete with photography.
Sua s’dai ch’naam tmaiy (Happy New Year)!
Until next time,
-N