Anlong Veng Once Again--A Few Observations

Chickens really do cross the road, and the cows really do come home. No flying pigs, though—they prefer to ride on motorbikes. The rain is good for everyone: it keeps the farmer’s rice crops from drying out, and keeps the rest of us from sweating for awhile. The frogs come out in the rain as well. One came into our house. He was tiny and I nearly missed him. It was a bigger storm than usual, with thunder and lighting, and wind that had me moving through the house to close the windows. The power had gone out as well, so I was putting buckets out to catch the rain by flashlight. I noticed a little pebble on the floor, and then—hop! That was the frog. I tried herding him to hop towards the open door, but he headed for the shadows by the bikes instead. And that was the last I saw of him. I hope for his sake he hopped his way back outside eventually.

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. ;)

AV House Tour

Welcome to our orange abode! Hope these video clips play well for you.

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.

Shakin' It Khmer Style

Last week was the annual FHCambodia staff retreat. Monday morning, all the Anlong Veng staff headed south, and the Phnom Penh staff headed north, and we all converged in the middle in the city of Siem Reap. Siem Reap is one of the big tourist destinations in Cambodia, because of it's nearness to the Angkor Wat ruins. This means that there are lots of hotels around, hence it being the site of our retreat. The upsides of staff retreat: air conditioning in the room for sleeping, hot water to shower with, and Western food to sneak out and buy during the afternoon breaks. The downsides: eating lots of sketchy Cambodian hotel food, spending many hours in teaching sessions on the hot hotel roof (see above picture), and attempting to understand and stay awake for said sessions. Although, while my understanding of the retreat speaker was limited, the Khmer staff seemed to soak it up. He gave a week of discipleship on the basics of Christianity--a good review for those staff who have been believers for awhile, and a good intro for those staff who are new Christians or are still Buddhist.

All in all, the retreat went fine, and Thursday evening was our big special banquet--meaning even more Khmer food, although this time the meal was sandwiched between speeches at the beginning and dancing at the end (see the picture at the bottom--the blond lady is our Swiss staff member, not me :) ). If you ever spend much time in Cambodia, you will get your fair share of chances to experience Cambodian dancing. Traditional Cambodian dancing (similar to Thai dance) is a very slow, stylized type of movement, with hand gestures and body position taking on significant meaning. It tells a story. Check it out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WEIPMPW0U or here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjteFhfRphw. These positions and gestures are called "apsara," and carvings of apsara dancing are found at Angkor Wat. Professional dancers start as children and study for years to master the art.

This restraint and hand twisting carries over into dancing in day to day life--at our retreat celebration, other big shindigs, and especially at weddings. Whoever feels like dancing (and whoever gets pulled out of their chairs to join in) forms a big circle, walks around the room, and does their best attempt at classical hand gestures (amazing how sweaty you can get walking in a circle and flapping your hands). In this type of dancing, there's a lot of repetition, and not much choreography or big movement. Sometimes things get exciting and they speed the music up a little faster, and sometimes you can change up the way you step around the circle (i.e. cross one foot in front of the other instead of behind!).

And that's about it. I find I have a little too much rhythm for this type of dancing...a little too much wanting to bust out some other moves. Although in all fairness, there are some variations: some dances you move towards and away from a partner instead of in a circle, some dances are very reminiscent of the Electric Slide, and sometimes for the last song all rules go out the window and people dance however they want (mostly however they see their friends dancing). It's pretty great--if you've ever wanted to do the Funky Chicken or Cabbage Patch or just flap your arms around, and have a dozen Khmer people start doing exactly the same thing--this is your big chance :) Never forget, too, that Cambodian dancing is accompanied by (loud) Cambodian pop music and live karaoke, so if singing is more your bag...you'll be right at home, too. Come on over.

Welcome to Anlong Veng

Here is the FHCambodia Anlong Veng staff! International staff included--you can see my pale face shining out from the back row on the right, and if you look closely you can find another white person or two, and two from Japan. Altogether, I think there are around fifty staff--not sure if everyone made it into this picture or not.

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? :)

Bikes Galore

So, last Friday I bought a bicycle. The old-fashioned, single speed, pedal variety. It's the first bike I've owned since the green Huffy I won from Channel 2 in a contest in second grade. As you can probably tell from that long gap in bike ownership, I'm not much of a bike rider. But, because exercise options here are somewhat limited, and because driving a motorcycle around has gotten me back in the habit of riding around on two wheels, I decided to take the plunge.

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!

Rainy Season

The rainy season has officially been here, in full force, for the last two weeks or so. Typically it starts in May, so mid-April was a little early--although the hot season came early this year, too, so the rainy season was more than welcome to start when ever it felt like it. We've had some big stormy downpours, and a few lighter rains as well. The downpours do a good job of flooding anything that happens to be lower lying that what surrounds it. Sometimes this means flooded streets or sidewalks, sometimes property. On the lot where I live, there are three houses. Two of these (mine included) are smaller and newer, and are built up a foot or so higher than the rest of the lot. The third house is actually sunk a few inches lower than the rest of the lot. And in general, all the land surrounding out lot is higher than we are--our lot is sort of at the middle of a "bowl." So--yes, guess where all that flooding rainwater goes? Right onto our property! (And plenty of other properties as well, we are by no means the only ones.)

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.