Friday, November 6, 2009
By Request
6:00 am--alarm on my cell phone goes off. Drag myself up soon after, untuck the mosquito net from around my mattress and twist it up into a knot to keep it out of the way for the day. Proceed to get ready and eat breakfast.
7:25ish am--lock up and climb on the moto to head to the office.
7:30 am--devotions begin for all staff. We open in prayer, sing three songs in Khmer, read a chapter in the Bible (currently we are wrapping up the book of Luke), staff share their comments/questions/insights from the chapter, share prayer requests, pray all together, the end.
8:15-8:30 am--get to work. For me, I find a spot at a table in the main room at the office (where we have just had devotions), plug my laptop in, and check e-mail. From now until lunch I work on whatever my current tasks are--lately, I have been formatting some documents for HR, editing some donor reports in English, making travel and accomodation arrangements for a guest who shows up next week, and installing antivirus and web filter programs on staff computers. I also spend about an hour each day doing some language study, have a few meetings each week, and get asked for help several times during the day: "how do I add paper to the printer? what's this word in English? my computer is doing this ___________," etc. So, I also spend time looking up IT solutions online, when the internet is working. Somewhere during the morning I usually succumb to the call of nature and brave the office bathroom--no light, no TP, no toilet seat, wet everywhere....
12:00 noon--pack up and head to lunch. If it is my turn to cook at the house (my Swiss housemate and I take turns) I head to the market for veggies and eggs or "fresh" meat...somedays we also cook dry beans. Head home, put rice on to cook, chop and stir fry everything, eat up--usually around 1:00. Clean up and relax for a little bit.
2:00 pm--back to the office, more of the morning.
5:00 pm--pack up again and head home to whatever needs doing during the evening. Some of the exciting options are: getting gas or an oil change for my moto, going for a bike ride before it gets dark at 6 or 6:30, burning our trash, reading, looking at Internet news articles that I found during the day, watching a dvd, playing a few rounds of solitaire on the computer, taking a cold shower, petting the cat.
6:30 or 7:00 pm--heat up the lunch leftovers, which have been sitting on the stove and surprisingly do not make us sick, or make something simple for dinner. Clean up again and do whatever until bed.
10:00 or 10:30 pm--hit the sack. Our landlords downstairs and the rest of Anlong Veng have been asleep since 8:30 or 9:00.
And that's that! On the weekends, switch office time to laundry time and house cleaning on Saturday, and church and helping with the kid's Sunday School/English class on Sunday. I know you all now wish that your lives were as exciting as mine :)
A few pictures to spice things up: a few of the guests in our bathroom this past week, and some shots of Preah Vihear, an ancient temple about 100km east of Anlong Veng. It lies directly along the Cambodian-Thai border, and while it is under Cambodian sovereignty, the temple area is disputed between both countries (hence the soldiers, weapons, and bunkers). There are occasional firefights and skirmishes here, sometimes leading people to evacuate the border regions out of fear that more intense fighting will break out--the chances of this are pretty small, though. Preah Vihear is a matter of cultural Cambodian pride. For more info, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preah_Vihear_Temple .
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Prolean Village
So--I headed out this morning with three of the staff on my team, Kunthea, Sovannary, and Thiera (the first is female, the second two are male). The four of us took two motos and headed out in our rain ponchos, as the after affects of Typhoon Ketsana, which caused so many problems in the Phillipines, were still giving us plenty of rain. Our goal was Prolean village, a widespread community about ten kilometers out with around 100 homes. We turned off of the main, paved road, and onto a more typical dirt road. As it is the rainy season, mud and puddles (or lakes...) and potholes are a matter of course, but after a few days of steady rain things get soggier than normal. Such was the case today after the Ketsana rains. We made it pretty close to the community before we pulled up on some pretty impressive flooding covering the road. There were several people taking advantage of this new water source close to their homes: a man washing his motorbike, a lady doing laundry, a whole herd of kids floating and splashing around. They made sure we knew the water was too deep to make it through on the moto without drowing out our spark plugs, so--we turned around to try a different road.
Luckily, because Prolean is so spread out, there are various roads to get there. One of these roads heads out through rice fields before emptying out onto a wide, flat, long stretch of gravel--Anlong Veng's very own landing strip for small planes. In fact, the Khmer word for "airport" is where Prolean village gets it's name.
We didn't take the road through the runway today, but the road we took did get us to the community just fine, albeit with mud-splashed legs. We stopped at the house where the weekly kid's club is held and washed up by scooping rainwater out of the large cement cisterns that are common here. Normally, schools in the Anlong Veng district have Thursdays off, sometimes holding classes on Saturdays instead, which makes Thursday the day of choice for our staff to run their kid's programs. Today, though, class was in session, so we ended up waiting for a bit for some of the students to finish up at school and head our way. Keep in mind that rural Cambodian schools have a lot of room for growth--most school days last for three hours or less, with teachers working either part-time or teaching two seperate groups of students in the morning and afternoon. The kids we saw today had already been to school and walked or biked the 10km back to Prolean in time to show up at our class around 9:30.
This lack of quality education is one reason our staff host kid's clubs--part of the material they present is basic language and math skills to supplement what the kids are able to pick up in formal school. The programs also feature some basic English teaching, songs, games, health and sanitation education (handwashing, teethbrushing, etc.), and, where village chiefs are open to it, Bible stories and prayer. Today's class focused on "a,b,c,d" and "door, apple, pig, dog". That along with a song or two and a stealing-places-from-each-other-in-a-circle game wrapped things up--while we have some amazing children's staff, as you can imagine there is plenty of room for growth in our kid's programs as well...
After today's class wrapped up, I went with one of the staff to visit a widow in the community. My guess is she is in her forties, with two children, the younger of which is about 10 or 11. A widow for ten years, she has been sick since this spring with some sort of abdominal ailment that leaves her looking like she is six or seven months pregnant. Treatment options are expensive, so we'll see what happens. We prayed with her and hopped back on the bike to head back to Anlong Veng for lunch. This afternoon it's back at the office, editing some English reports for our leadership staff and attempting to download a new antivirus program that I'll be installing on all the staff computers. With a little time out for some overdue blogging :) I apologize for the lack of pictures this time!
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
They Say That All Mammals Can Swim in a Pinch…
Cat: “Meeoowww! Meeooww!”
Us conversing: “ Man, what is that cat’s deal?”
Cat: “Meeooww!” (pause…)
On the roof: (thump…scratch, scratch, slide, slide, scratch-scratch-scratch!!....SPLASH!)
Us: “Did the cat just fall in the water tank??”
From the water tank: “MEEOOWWWWW!!” (swim, swim)
Us: “Guess we need to go get the cat out of the water tank.”
And so, we grabbed a flash light and my battery-powered lantern and headed out into the night. Municipal running water is unheard of in rural Cambodia; people draw water from wells or holding ponds or catch rain water in giant pots. Occasionally, people have various types of water tanks or cisterns. Our house has a large, open tank built like an extra room on the backside of the house. About eight feet tall, it collects rain water and holds it for our use.
So, we tramped through the wet grass and mud, around to the back of the house. I climbed up the ladder that allows access to the water tank (which, despite the precarious looking angle—see the picture—was actually quite steady). I peered over the edge, and—yep, there it was, a cat treading water. Unfortunately, the water level in the tank was a good four feet below the top of the tank--too low for me to just reach in and grab the cat, meaning that we needed to move on to plan B. Fresh out of any lifeguard/man-overboard equipment, my roommate had the idea that we could stick something wooden into the water for the cat to grab onto.
Fast forward a little bit—my electric lantern decided to shut off, the cat keeps swimming and crying for help, my roommate uses her little flashlight to find a big muddy plank among the discarded items in the grass, and a few minutes later: I find myself perched on the ladder, in the pitch black, in the rain, with plank in hand and a sodden feline clinging to the other end. Once the cat got on board, I expected it to run right up the new ramp we had just provided it with, but the cat had other ideas. So, thanks to leverage, I got to heft the cat up to the side of the tank. Tired from all the swimming and like most Cambodian cats, scared of people (even ones who just pulled it out of a tank of water), it crouched there for awhile. We headed back inside, duty done, and the cat cleared out sometime after, hopefully no worse for the wear. Poor thing! So our, our tank has been cat-free since then.
Bottom picture: The tank and the plank
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Photos
1. Rainy day view of our back yard. Luckily, the front yard doesn't get so muddy. But--we do get to pick our way through the back to throw out any food scraps, and after the rain stops, to hang our laundry up to dry.
2. One of the kids from a village munching on some freshly-cut sugar cane. If you've never tried it, you first work to peel off the rough outer skin, and then gnaw off a bite from the center. It's wet and sweet and full of fibers, so you chew on it for awhile to get the juice out and then spit out the leftover fibers. Sugar cane is sold by vendors as one of the many street-food options, either cut into bite-size, ready-to-eat chunks, or pressed into juice.
3. Lots of ducks and chickens running around the villages! (Along with plenty of other animals) The mothers waddle around with their broods, ranging in age from baby bird to elementary to teenagers--they are rather interesting looking in the middle stages. Here a mother duck has drawn in her ducklings away from some threat.
4. Vaccine time--I never did figure out what disease they were vaccinating against, but we arrived in a village one day at the same time as this doctor, and got to watch the process.
5. The local wats (Buddhist temples) send various processions along the streets once a week or so. Here you can see a local-style tractor, one of a parade of four or five making it's way through town complete with Buddha statue, monk, and loudspeaker.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Little Miss Muffet
Monday, July 20, 2009
Anlong Veng Once Again--A Few Observations
We like the rain, too, because it fills ups the water reservoir built onto the back of our house. This is where our running water comes from. Occasionally, if it is very full, we have water at the kitchen sink. As the water level drops, we lose running water at the tap where we wash our clothes, and lower still, from the bathroom. At this point all our water needs to be brought into the house, drawn from the lowest tap of all, directly from the water tank out back. And if all else fails, we take out buckets to the well a few houses down the street. Or better, put them out to catch the rain as it falls.
If you as a pale and obvious foreigner head out and about, the children shout “Hello!” to you from their homes and bicycles. Sometimes this is friendly, sometimes their mothers surreptitiously encourage it, and sometimes it’s disrespectful. The adults tend to limit themselves to over-the-shoulder peeks and stares, although some of them are eager to have a conversation. Sometimes our next-door-neighbor landlords like to peer through our windows, just in case we’re up to something interesting.
I have the same conversation over and over each time I meet new people in the villages where we work. In descending order of popularity, here are the questions everyone wants answered about yours truly: “What country are you from? How long have you been in Cambodia? Are you married yet? Do you want to marry a foreigner or a Khmer? How old are you? How many times a day do you eat rice in America? Why are your legs so fat?” This is accompanied by much shy giggling, admiration of my white skin, and abject shock that it's possible to survive eating bread everyday and rice only a few times a month.
Sometimes I feel like I’m living in not just another culture but a time warp as well. As mentioned above, we get buckets of water from the well. There are chickens in our yard. Oxcarts regularly drive by on the road. Most nights I end up doing things by lantern light, albeit an electric lantern. We wash our clothes by hand, hang them on the line to dry. Our food is stored in a cupboard, not a refrigerator. There are dirt roads, outhouses, and a lack of sidewalks everywhere. And of course, there are all those cows heading home—not sure if they count as part of the time warp, but they’ve got to count as something. ;)
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
A Week in the Life...
This week I:
Drove my motorcycle through a herd of cows….three times.
Got plenty of practice driving the same motorcycle through puddles, mud, narrow dirt paths, and across plank “bridges.”
Ate Thai food at a Cambodian restaurant with Japanese people while the proprietor cranked up the John Denver and Johnny Cash, just for us.
In the process of using the roll of toilet paper in the bathroom, made some new friends who had decided to relax there for awhile: a mouse, a small cockroach, a big cockroach, and one baby scorpion.
Met the mommy scorpion while walking out the door to go to work.
Started riding my bicycle to and from the office once a day in order to get some exercise.
Realized just how much sweat this exercise generates.
Worked on materials for a staff orientation handbook.
Had my landlord knock on my door at 6:30 Monday morning to surprise me by delivering a bed for me to use.
Bought a mattress to use with the bed.
Tried not to fall off of the back of the motorcycle while my new Swiss roommate gave me and the mattress a ride back to the house.
Saw the aftereffects of a car driving off the road and under a house—“under” because the house, like many of the homes here, is elevated on stilts or beams. The car knocked over two of these beams—the house was still standing, but barely.
Visited two of the villages my team works in.
Attended several training sessions with the other FHCambodia staff, part of an ongoing training process in community development.
Had welcome bottle of aloe vera after-sun gel delivered to me by the American facilitator of these training sessions.
Managed to have my shoe fall off while driving my motorcycle; not once, but twice.
Prepared two new laptops for office staff to use.
Slowly started getting unpacked and moved into my new house.
Bought a few baguette-type loaves of bread, the only thing locally available. Saved one to eat for breakfast only to find out it had come complete with a family of ants living inside.
Gave a valiant effort at making tortillas.
Tried not to eat too much of my stock of peanut butter, crackers, and cereal from the city.
Watched a dvd on my laptop—while under my mosquito net and pretending my fan was turning faster than the low electricity was allowing it to turn.
Kept muddling through trying to get the hang of living here and understanding what is going on around me.
Made it through one more week in Anlong Veng.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Shakin' It Khmer Style
Monday, June 1, 2009
Welcome to Anlong Veng
I have officially been in Anlong Veng for one week now. Currently, I am living at one of the guest houses, waiting for a bedroom to be built for me in the house rented by another FH staff member from Switzerland. Hopefully soon the room will be completed and I'll be able to move in with her. This will be good for my sanity, by letting me settle in, and for my wallet, when I no longer have to pay for each night at the guest house (although at $6.25 a night, the cost is not too overwhelming).
So--now begins the process of actually beginning to "work" and figure out what my job will look like. Up first are some tasks relating to IT (which I have been declared qualified to oversee based on the fact that I speak English and have used computers previously), working with other staff to develop a better orientation process for new Khmer staff members, and getting to know my fellow co-workers, especially those who I will work with on the Anlong Veng area team (there are four area team altogether). Needless to say, there is lots to figure out in order to get all of that accomplished--also add into the mix continued language study, and eventually work related to my main role, as an advisor for curriculum and training. Anyone want to come help out? :)
Monday, May 18, 2009
Bikes Galore
Shopping in Phnom Penh involves knowing (or guessing) where in the city you can buy things. There are the classic local markets, which have fruits, veggies, meats, rice, and some common basic stuff--think the Cambodian version of a grocery store. Then you have the slightly bigger markets, which have the basic commodoties and a whole lot more--think Super Wal-Mart. This is where you buy clothes, dishes, bag and backpacks, shoes, dvd's, jewelry, sheets and towels, lightbulbs, moto parts, and so on. There's maybe six or eight of these markets in the city, and they each have the reputation of "specializing" in certain types of goods: gifts and touristy stuff and Western clothes, fabric and more Asian-style outfits, jewelry and gemstones. In general, whatever you need, you can head to a big market and find it.
But there are also plenty of items that are most often sold in shops rather than at the market. Take furniture, for instance, or larger electronics (fans and appliances), or phones and airtime cards. Groups of these shops tend to be located in a cluster in one particular area of the city--there is one street that is lined with motorcycle shops, another with cane and bamboo furniture. So--to buy a bike, we went to the bike section of the city. The older Khmer sister that I live with came along to show me where to go, help me buy the bike, and then to drive my motorcycle back home after the process. Through some manner of reasoning that makes perfect sense to her, we drove past various bicycle shops until she found one to her liking.
Here I had a choice of three styles of bikes, costing $37, 35, or 45, depending on which row I chose my bike from. Bike pedals are not attached until after you purchase the bike, so choosing one (especially for my friend and I who are uninformed about what makes a quality bike) was a matter of seeing what looked nice and seemed sturdy (i.e. thump on bike parts and see what happens). We got to sample the kickstands and sit on the seats, and to take care not to browse among the identical bikes two inches away in the next shop. During this process we also chatted with the auntie who owned the shop, and got barked at by her chihuahua dog, who sat in a box on one of the rows of bikes (chihuahuas in Asia?).
And then finally, bike selected, we made our purchase. Final price: $43, including the previously lacking pedals, a basket on the handlebars, a bell, a chain to the bike up with, and a light that you lean against the front tire so that it is powered by the friction of the turning wheel (if you stop you are in the dark, I guess). I don't know if that's a good price or not, but at least it was less than the $50 another foreigner spent at the shop next door. At this point, I remembered the length of time since I had last ridden a bike, and the interesting Phnom Penh traffic, and decided to take the bike home in a tuk-tuk (a cart pulled by a moto) so that I could take my first ride on quieter streets. This also meant that my first ride was in front of the Cambodian grandma at our house, to her great amusement. And once all of that had been accomplished, my next order of business was to remove all the pre-applied stickers off of the bike frame--I tend not to decorate my modes of transportation with neon flowers and blue eagles. Stickers removed, my new bike looks a little less reminiscent of my second grade Huffy, although I did learn that the decals had done a good job of hiding all the scratches and rust spots in the paint.
Finding a store that carried bike helmets was another story altogether, but--that has been accomplished as well, and I am now ready to hit the road!
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Rainy Season
Therefore--the two lowest areas of our lot, the ground floor of the large house and the "yard" in the back of the lot, have turned into two small lakes for the duration of the wet season. Other areas of the lot flood or dry out depending on how much rain we have. This morning they are basically dried out, although over the weekend we had the most standing water we've had so far. There was enought water that Tol, the younger sister of the Khmer family I live with, caught an 8-inch fish swimming around the front yard. Said fish has now been passing it's time in a water-filled garbage can until Tol decides to cook it up for dinner. It is a little disconcerting wading into the flooding and wondering what else is lurking in the muddy water besides just fish. The lake in the back yard is now home to scores of black water snails. Where they came from, I don't know, but there are plenty of them. The biggest ones have shells about an inch and a half long. The water also means that some of our residents ants have abandoned their wetter homes and now spend their days tramping in lines across my front porch. And of course, there are always the choruses of frogs that croak away day and night--a whole range of sounds from baby to grandpa frogs. I kind of like it.
Thankfully, my little house has been up high enough to stay high and dry. However, I do get to wade through whatever water is in the front yard to get from my house to the big house or to the road and back. Also, we park out motor bikes on the ground floor of the big house, where they can be locked in so they are not stolen during the night. So--between going to and from my house, and driving my bike in and out of the lake that is the ground floor, I have been hanging out in lots of water. I try not to think too much about what all has washed into the water--just rinse my feet off when I get a chance. And so far so good--no wierd skin funguses or anything :)
But--flooding and wading aside, the rains do cool the weather off, which is MUCH appreciated. Plus a good storm is enjoyable when you are dry and inside, and even if you are out and about in it--life goes on. Packable plasic ponchos were made for just such an occasion.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Travels
Monday, March 23, 2009
Now Official
Today I got to experience the Ministry of Transportation—DMV Cambodian style. Before today my most exciting DMV story involved trying to find parking, walking through some sidewalk dice games, and people-watching at the Denver Five-Points DMV office. The Phnom Penh MOT may be giving Denver a run for its money.
Although I bought my motorcycle in November, I have until now been driving it around sans license plate. And while traffic laws here are a little more open to interpretation and a lot less often enforced, these laws do exist—one law being that vehicles should in fact have license plates. I have been pulled over by the police twice for not having one, and each time had to call a Khmer friend on the phone to help be bargain the officers down from the extortionary fine originally quoted to me ($10-15) to a more reasonable price ($1-3). I could easily have been pulled over more often, but a few facts about Cambodian law enforcement worked in my favor. One, police officers pull people over who are driving towards them, rather than following you and having you stop. So they are facing you as you drive by, and do not see the rear end of your moto—with or without license plate—until you are already past them, and it is too late to be pulled over. Two, Cambodian officers are nine times out of ten on foot. Their preferred method of catching traffic offenders is to stage a stakeout of five or six policemen, who wait on the far side of a traffic light. When the light turns green, the traffic begins to flow through the intersection, and the officers jump into position, stretching themselves out in a line across the lanes of oncoming traffic. They act as a human net to catch whichever motos are not able to slip through the gaps. In theory, there may be a law about needing to pull over when an officer asks you to do so, but—there is no penalty or police pursuit if you do not. Thus—unless an officer is particularly daring and steps directly in front of your moving bike, this is not the most effective means of asking people to stop.
So—while it would have been good to get a license plate before now, it was not a big problem that I did not. The first step in getting one requires establishing proof of residence in the city. This is done by getting letters from your village (neighborhood) leader and your district leader that state you do in fact live in those places (although how they determine if you actually live where you say you do, I don’t know—luckily, this step was taken care of for me by my Khmer friend/coworker/roommate). Palms must be greased at each step, although as with the police, there is room for bargaining.
Once you have the official letters, you can take them along with your moto ownership papers to the Ministry of Transporation, like I did this morning. This is where the steps start to get a little fuzzy. Again, luckily, I was accompanied by my Khmer friend, who took care of things, and even though I was there, I’m not entirely sure what all happened or why. I do know we opted for the “fast” version of getting a license plate, meaning we paid more money so we could actually receive the license plate today, and not a few months from now. I also know that the place was a busy beehive of activity, with various desks and windows and lines and people with bullhorns. The day proceeded something like this: we waited at one desk, I wrote my phone number and put my thumb print on some forms, I got told to wait there while my friend and the staff person left for awhile, they came back, they talked, I stood around, we left so my friend could have noodle soup for breakfast, we waited in a seating area in the middle of all the mobs and lines while watching karaoke on tv, went back to wait at the original desk, had my picture taken, paid, made the unusual request for a receipt, got the license plate, waded back outside to get my bike from the parking area, wheeled it back across the street and into the building, waited for my friend to return to the original desk to see if she could exchange my plate for one with "a bigger number," turned in backwards to get in line with a hundred other motos, finagled our way to the front of the crowd to have the plate pneumatically attached to the bike—this last under a sign that says “plates attached for free”, where we paid the men who performed this service. Also during this process, we were hot and sweaty as a happy little bonus….:) Then we went back to work.
So, hopefully no more getting pulled over for me! Here’s a picture of the “line” for getting the license plate screwed onto my moto:
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The Language Saga Continues....
Until things start to get a little more complex. Sentence word order in Khmer can be similar to English, or it can be very different. There are also differences in how many ideas one word encapsulates. For instance, there are some things in English that we express with only one word; some of these concepts are expressed with more than one word in Khmer. Take the word "know". We use this word in English to express a variety of meanings. In Khmer, however, there are different words depending on what it is you are talking about knowing: "know a fact/information," "know a person/word/location," or "know how to do something." Or take the English word "carry." You will need different Khmer words to say carry on your back, carry slung over your shoulders, carry on the back of an animal, carry on your head, carry in your arms, carry a light object in your hands, or carry a heavy object in your hands. This works the other way too--sometimes English has multiple words where Khmer has only one. In Khmer, "ree-un" covers the concepts of both "study" and "learn."
And then there's the Khmer word "owie." Depending on how it's used, "owie" can be translated into English as: to, from, give, cause, for, let, tell, ask, and probably something else. It can also be added to a phrase to mean "I promise I will do this." Or in some cases, it can be added to an adjective to turn it into an adverb (from "quick" to "quickly"). This is the grammar that I mentioned I have been trying to learn. Needless to say, it is a little confusing! I'm still working on exactly when and where to insert an "owie" into my sentences.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
A Few New Relationships
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Chicken Stories
The wedding was held in the countryside. Phnom Penh is a little bit like Washington, D.C.; it is it's own independent municipality but not a "state" or province. However, it is surrounded by a province called Kandal Province--this is where the wedding was held. Getting there involved maybe a 45-minute drive, and a little trip across a river on a ferry. The ferry consisted of two big rowboat-type things. A deck of long planks was laid across the boats, providing room for one car and maybe a dozen motorcycles to drive on. With a car engine for a motor, the ferry took a smooth, five-minute ride across the river, and everyone was free to go their way on the opposite bank. It was a little disconcerting to drive onto some wood laid over a rowboat, but the ferry proved quite seaworthy and held us all up very well.
But I digress: back to Theingi. After the wedding, we made a quick stop at the groom's family home, where we were given fresh sweet corn (very tasty!). Theingi and her brother also picked out a nice, teenaged country chicken to bring home. And so, less than a week later, we have been hearing daily chicken stories about how the bird is settling into his new home. Chickens are not a usual house pet here (are they anywhere??), so these stories are quite amusing to the Cambodian staff--and Theingi laughs at herself, as well.
I wish you could hear the stories as Theingi would tell them. They go something like this:
"My chicken, oh--he is very clever! He is a clever chicken! He is very strong. At night, I put him here, like this..." (pats her lap) "...and then, I should do like this..." (strokes her head) "...and then he is going to sleep. Yes. And now, he is wearing the panties!" (a chicken diaper, perhaps???)
So far, the chicken cries if it is put to bed without having it's head petted. It also enjoys watching evening tv, and so it stays up past the normal chicken bedtime of 6 or 7 pm to catch a few shows before being petted to sleep at 9 or 10. Theingi carries him to bed once he's sleeping ("He is like the child!"), and tucks him in to sleep in his basket under his very own mosquito net. Staying up late makes it hard for the chicken to wake up in the mornings--he can't be roused until 7am, long past the normal chicken waking hour of 4 or 5.
And as Theingi says: "Maybe, every two or three days, the chicken--we should take the bath to him. Maybe right now, my brother is taking the bath to him!" Once he's clean, he has his feathers blow dried--which apparently makes him as sleepy as when he has his head stroked. Last but not least, for his poultry enjoyment, Theingi's brother helps the chicken call her several times a day because he likes to cluck to her over the phone (you thought it was bad when your kid wanted a cell phone, wait until your chicken asks for one!).
So there you have it--the latest chicken stories, hopefully with more to come later!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Things I've Learned in Cambodia
3. Merging is preferable to stopping and looking. Unless, of course, it would have been better for your health to have stopped and looked.
4.There really are a lot of edible parts on an animal.
5. Nothing says "masculinity" like cruising around town on your hot pink motor bike and matching helmet.
6. If you drive a Lexus, make sure people are aware of this fact by having the word "Lexus" painted in foot-high letters along each side of your vehicle.
7. Saturday mornings were made for waking up early and cleaning the house.
8. If the dog pees on your bed, your electric lights quit working, and your wall is covered with ants, it's nothing to worry about--just keep watching tv.
And a few random pictures for you viewing pleasure:
Monday, January 26, 2009
New Words
If you've never really seriously studied a language (high school French, while good, doesn't count--sorry!), it's an interesting process. I dream of studying new words. Khmer vocab gets stuck in my head like a song does, whether I know what it means or not. Some new vocab seems to be instantly cemented into my head--I remember it immediately and can use it at any time. Other words--no matter how many times I read them, hear them, use them, write them--I still forget them. Associations can help the memory process--for instance, if a Khmer word sounds similar to an English word, that helps me remember. For instance, the Khmer for "curtain" sounds vaguely like the phrase "the unknown." At this point, now that I've learned a little bit of Khmer, it can also be helpful if a new word sounds like Khmer word I already know. Then again, that can also be confusing--I remember three words that sound very similar: which one am I actually supposed to use in this situation??
One nice thing about Khmer, though, is that it uses a lot of root words to make new words. For instance, take the word for "water." Add the word for "room," and you have "room water"--bathroom. Or add "apple" and get "water apple": apple juice. "Water of cow": milk. "Water bee": honey. "Water fish": fish sauce. And so on. Very handy if you can hear and recognize the root words and what they are combined with (the key word there is IF...). It can also be educational. I was talking with the younger sister that I live with while we worked to prepare lunch on Sunday. She was cutting up a vegetable that we have fairly often, but that we do not commonly eat in the US (trust me, most of the fruits and a lot of the veggies are new to me. Tasty, but new). It was similar to Romaine lettuce leaves growing on stalks. I asked what it was called in Khmer, and the answer was "cutnaa." And bingo! Light goes on! I already knew that I enjoyed "pikaa cutnaa"--in English, cauliflower. In Khmer, that translates to "flower of the cutnaa." So--the cauliflower is the flower of the cutnaa plant, and for lunch we were going to eat the leaves and stalks. Who knew that cauliflower had leaves and stalks, much less that they were edible. I, for one, have never wondered why we call it "cauliflower."
Language can be an interesting history lesson, too. More food examples: combine the word for "garlic" with one of the words for "foreigner" to make "garlic of the foreigner," and you get the word for "onion." Same thing for some other veggies--"thing that grows in the dirt of the foreigner"--potato. "Bean of the foreigner"--green beans or peas. Makes you realize that these things were introduced by foreigners and new words had to be formed for them. The best words of all to learn, though, are those that are adopted from English the same way we've adopted "taco" or "deja vu." I managed to remember these Khmer words (although I still have to work on pronouncing them Cambodian style): "computer," "strawberry," and best of all--"chocolate."
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Maybe if you want a very SMALL omelette...
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Life and Times
For some specifics, let's see...last Saturday I did the usual laundry, did some reading, got all showered up, and then went with my Cambodian roommate to the hairdresser. She got her makeup, nails, and hair done; I stuck with the hair. I perplexed them a little bit because they insisted my hair was too short to curl or pin up. So, I ended having all the ends carefully curled out and up and away from my face--they thought it was great, I felt like Farah Fawcett. Oh well, it only cost a dollar to get done. The reason for the hairdos--we attended a wedding that evening for the children of some FH staff members who are working in Anlong Veng. Cambodian weddings traditionally take a day or more to celebrate and involved numerous outfits for the wedding party; sometimes you can attend the actual wedding ceremony in the morning, or more commonly, do like we did and show up for the party in the evening. When you arrive you are directed to the nearest open seats, and once your table is filled up, you receive the appetizers for a 6-10 course meal. The courses follow one or two at a time. Later in the evening is cake cutting (but not eating) and traditional-style dancing (involving hand movements and walking with a group of people around and around in a circle).
Sunday--the usual two church services, watched a DVD on my laptop. At the afternoon service I joined the worship team to play the guitar and will do this on a somewhat regular basis. After church there is a felllowship time with yummy baked goods, and then usually heading to dinner with people.
Monday--regular day, except I skipped tutoring to visit the US Embassy and register my presence in the country. The theory behind this is so that, in the case of emergency, the Embassy knows where all the in-country US citizens are and can contact them with relevant information. The Embassy can also be helpful for things like voting from abroad. To register, I went through two security checks with metal detectors, leaving my phone and camera at the first one (no electronics allowed in, apparently). Then I waited in the right line (much shorter for me as a citizen than for people of other nationalities who were there for visas, etc.), filled out a form, turned it in, got my stuff, and left. Mission accomplished.
Tuesday--after tutoring, I ran errands--got gas in my moto (usually $2-3 per tank), stopped at a local bakery because I am a foreigner and like things made out of wheat, and went to the grocery store (yes, there are a few international-type grocery stores in the big cities, with local and imported food that foreigners like to eat). I got pulled over on my moto by the police on the way to the store because I don't have a license plate yet (something that is easier said than done to get)--they wanted to fine me ten dollars for this fact. More truthfully, as they told me themselves, there were five of them and they wanted some beer to drink (accepting bribes is very common in many professions here, and is not shocking--many jobs do not pay enough to live off of, and the system of accepting payouts is thus in place). With my small Khmer vocab, I managed to joke them down to $5, and then with a phone call to my Cambodian roommate to talk to them better than I could, we go the price down to 5000 Riel ($1.25).
Today (Wednesday)--normal day again. We all went to lunch as a staff as a goodbye thing for a man from Canada who has been here on a short-term trip for the past three months. Tonight I am eating dinner at the home of another American who I met through church and some other people.--yum yum.
Coming up--two more days of work/studying. This coming weekend we have a retreat for all the international FHCambodia staff--two Japanese staff members (one has been here over fours years, the other almost one), one Burmese lady (Burmese as in Myanmar) who has been the accountant for over a year, a Phillipina lady who got hired the end of December, a Swiss couple who will be starting soon, myself, and the country director and his wife (also American). So, I am working with one of the Japanese staff to lead worship for the event--need to get that ready by Friday, and then for the retreat itself we are using the pool and a meeting room at a local resort-type hotel, and then going home to sleep (doing it on the cheap!). Sunday--there is a potluck at the International church for two pastoral candidates that they are considering asking to co-fill the pastorate.
And I think that is enough for now! Just about time for me to head to dinner. :)
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Christmas Part Deux
1. When it is your turn to give your gift, get very excited, and also a little embarassed. The other participants will aid you in this by clapping and hooting.
2. Stand in the middle of the circle with your gift. Melodramatically make a big show of pretending to give the gift to several of those present. Again, the other participants will aid you by standing and pretending to take the gift from you.
3. After an appropriate length of time, present the gift to the actual recipient. The clapping and hooting will continue. IMPORTANT: do not actually let go of the gift until you and the recipient have both paused and smiled at the camera for the official "handing over of the gift" photo.
4. You can sit again as things calm down and the recipient opens the gift. Once the gift is opened, everyone will be happy about it, and the recipient will thank you very politely, and the next gift will now be given.
So--here it is, a video of my gift. Keep in mind that this was not a white elephant, gag-gift type of exchange--this is considered a quality gift. And I must say, my pens and pencils have never had such an exhilerating place to reside. Turn your sound up and watch the clip. Prepare to be jealous...
Friday, January 2, 2009
Good Eats
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Soo-us-die Ch'nam Tuh-my!!!
New Year's Eve is not a huge holiday in Cambodia--it gets usurped by the celebration of Chinese New Year and Khmer New Year later in the spring. In fact, New Year's Eve I spent at yet another Cambodian Christmas celebration (think sitting in a chair for a few hours listening to people sing and then eating some kind of fishy Cambodian food) with the extended family of the family that I live with. We also had a big rain storm, unusual for this time of year (the dry season). New Year's Day--a holiday from work, so I spent a lazy day catching up on some reading and heping to clean up the flooded first floor of our house, compliments of the rain storm (Happy New Year!).
So--I've been in Cambodia a month and half and have made it through the celebration of my third major American holiday. In the coming months we can start on some of the Cambodian ones! May you see God's goodness and care in the coming year!