Photos

Coming up with blog topics is not always the easiest thing in the world for my tired brain, so--here's a few things to look at instead of a lot of writing! These are just a few shots of some of the things I see on a regular basis in Anlong Veng. Starting from top to bottom, these are:
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.

Little Miss Muffet

Well, we don't sit on tuffets and we sure haven't had any curds and whey, but we do have a nice big spider that lives by the ceiling in our kitchen. We leave him there to eat all the smaller bugs for us. Sorry for the flash glare on his giant head....Anyways, note the smaller spider on the left. The smaller spider's body is about a third of an inch across, so you can do the math to figure out the size of the big guy. Don't know if this particular spider is edible or not, but there are plenty of other tarantulas around that get hunted from their holes in the forest, fried up, and eaten as travel snacks. Or if you prefer, there are also crickets, termites, and big beetles available. I have not yet indulged. And do not plan to.

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? :)