Let's Reminisce

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my being in Cambodia. It hardly seems possible I’ve been here that long, and that I haven’t been here longer.

I still remember as vividly as if it was yesterday...

Fretting over what to pack, needing help from friends to be able to start the process. Realizing at 3:00 a.m. the night before I left I didn’t have a TSA lock and having to go to Wal-Mart to get one. The dazed feeling that came over me on entering the automatic doors and being hit with fluorescent lights, seeing aisles upon aisles of stuff, enough to overwhelm the senses even at that quiet hour.

The faces of my fellow volunteers, just as shell-shocked and uncertain as I was, when we met in San Francisco for “staging” (the initial meeting before leaving for your country of service), unsure of myself and what I was doing—where this adventure would take me and whether or not I was ready for it. Little did I know that some of these wonderfully mixed-up people would become my best friends here, more like family than I could have ever imagined.

The giddy feelings of excitement and terror experienced in tandem as our plane lifted from the tarmac and into the unknown, our hands reaching toward the sky like it was an amusement park ride.

Those first days in Phnom Penh for orientation-- hours upon hours of presentations. Hearing words like “doxycyclin” and “mosquito racket” and beginning to assign them tangible meaning.

Throughout training I recall...

Meeting my host sister at the wat in Takeo, worrying she wouldn’t like me and wanting to break the silence but being unable to as we sat with our legs off to the side nibbling on fried cakes and fruit, and trusting she would understand through my good intentions and/or ESP how much I wanted nothing more or less than for us to be best friends.

Trying way too hard at dinner to make conversation about everything, and somehow endearing my family in the process (or maybe it was pity I was engendering): “How do you say ‘road’ in Khmer?’ ‘How do you say ‘soy sauce’ in Khmer?” … Bowl after bowl of rice: white, brown, and sometimes black. Sweet, savory, dried, boiled… Rice with banana, rice with pumpkin, rice with peanut butter, rice with congealed blood, rice with ants...

And of course, from the past ten months at site I will never forget...

Feeling a sense of purpose when I make my host dad laugh, his hard-shell exterior breaking as he hoots gleefully from his gut.

Learning from my host family. Having preconceptions and assumptions continually shattered every time I reach out and engage them. Being continuously surprised by how much they know about things many Americans still stick their heads in the sand about (like climate change, for example).

Sitting on a rice-mat hammock in silence, comfortably, listening to the wind rustle the trees and watching the cars and motos pass, not rushing the moment but being able to contentedly mingle with it.

Meeting my friend Ohn at the market. Wondering to myself who this loud, boisterous Khmer woman was and accepting an invitation to have lunch at her house because she spoke so fast I hardly knew what I was agreeing to... and in the process opening the door to a whirlwind year of fast talking, barely intelligible phone calls, lunches of peanut butter and honey “sandweech” (of which her immediate appreciation solidified for me that Ohn and I were meant to be friends). Afternoons of helping to make “noam” (cakes) that Ohn sells at the market. Absorbing over time how to properly roll out the dough for noampia (peanut-filled cake) or wrap a som jay (rice cake with banana) with banana leaves and tie off with rattan stems. Laughing about nothing and everything with Ohn and feeling a sense of belonging when I am at her house.

The feeling of accomplishment when I discovered my Khmer was good enough to hold a steady conversation, and then the immediate realization of how much I still didn’t know.

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This year has not been easy. It’s been an up and down roller coaster of unprecedented challenges and curveballs I’ve attempted to fumble my way through. Projects have gone awry or taken forever to get off the ground, co-teachers have disappointed me and left me wondering why I’m here. But more often than not, people here have surprised me with their kindness and willingness to welcome me into their homes and lives.

My students who seek to improve their skills despite the corruption and favoritism around them, the countless children for whom it is the highlight of their day to say “hello!” to the foreigner as I pass on my bike, the amazing people here who don’t let awful living conditions and minimal resources weaken their spirit, and of course, the 56 other volunteers from my group who are endeavoring on this crazy, unforgettable journey with me: thank you. I look forward to another year full of adventure, mishap, disappointments, and successes that are sure to come here in the Kingdom of Wonder.

Here are a few pictures to commemorate the journey, some of which you've seen before. 

Arriving in country: just look at that naïve barang...

 

My training host family. These people provided the warmest introduction I could have had to what my life would be like here for two years.

Takeo! Swearing-in ceremony with volunteers from my training village. I'll never forget those two months during which lasting friendships started to form.

Making som jay (sticky rice with coconut and banana) at Ohn's house.

Ohn's mom, showing me how to wrap the stem around the banana leaf without all the uncooked rice spilling out (you can guess what prompted that)

Friendly kid at the wat near my house I went to with my host mom during site visit

At Waichika's wedding in Phnom Penh. Waichika lived with my family for several months before she got married, in the room right next to mine on the top floor, and was a night nurse at the referral hospital where my host dad works.

With Ohn and two yays (grandmas) at a party.

:) Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to relaying more of my adventures and encounters to you over the course of this next year.

General Update and Library Happenings

Hello! I realize it’s been a while since I last posted, so I’ll relay the top five highlights of what I’ve been up to in the meantime:

1) I went to some friends’ Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World: a leadership camp that emphasizes empowering young Khmer women) in Kampong Cham, the province just north of me. We used a stencil to spray-paint shirts (Note: it is extremely difficult to keep black spray paint in one place. More often than not you will end up with gummy fingerprints all over the shirt.)

2) I helped a friend move in Phnom Penh. Despite looking like my legs are being crushed by these trunks, I was actually fairly comfortable.

3) I cooked lentil burgers, sweet potato chips, and lemonade in honor of 'Merica day

(Do you love your country as much as this girl does right now? I doubt it)

4) I ate brie from a wheel twice the size of my head while looking extremely awkward and out of place at a fancy Embassy event I never should have been allowed into

5) I took advantage of this excessively large bathroom to tap dance.

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...And that brings us to the present! After my library project’s initial burst of productivity things hit a brick wall. My school director asked me to wait to start the project until students had returned the books they’d borrowed over the course of the year. This meant not starting the project until after school was out, when students would be busy with private classes and/or helping their families at home, so I decided to give out a survey during the final weeks of school to gauge student interest and availability.

This proved futile for two reasons: first, because at that time students still didn’t know when they’d have free time (private class schedules had yet to be determined), and second, because I told them the wrong start date for the project. Heh. I told everyone I talked to we would begin working in earnest on July 2^nd, all the while forgetting I’d been invited to sing at an Embassy event for the 4th of July and would have to be in Phnom Penh on that date. So I sheepishly called my school director to ask if he could please mitigate my mistake during the morning announcements. At this point I was pretty sure no one was going to show up to help the spazzy foreigner teacher, but my students surprised me...

Four students were waiting for me when I came to the school on the day we agreed to start on. I asked them to write down a few of their thoughts on the map project (Do you think this a good idea? Do you think it is important to know where other countries in the world are? How can we see if we have learned more about geography than we knew before doing this project?)

They filled in a blank map with the countries they could name without looking.

One or two students took the reigns on the labeling, but most of them contributed

They identified about 30 countries. Some of them were labeled incorrectly or spelled wrong but I was impressed with how many they could name (world geography is not emphasized in Cambodian schools). We’ll do this exercise again after the map is completed and hopefully they’ll know a lot more than they do now.

Before painting.

We measured our space, taped it off, and lay down the base of ocean blue. The coordinates for any World Map Project are double the length as the height. Ours is 140 cm high by 280 cm wide.

The fruits of our labor: a (not-so) perfectly squared rectangle, in all its shining glory. I actually got a swell of pride when I came back to the school the morning after we’d completed this to do some touch-ups. Just a rectangle, yes, but my rectangle!

My boc or Khmer host dad (far right) has shown up multiple times to help. His curiosity was likely piqued when he first saw me rushing to the school, huffing and puffing down the stairs carrying and almost dropping a tub of paint, a yard-stick, rollers, and pencils, looking utterly confused and mumbling about having napped too long. My boc is a bit of an imposing character (the first day he showed up he stood on the margins with his arms folded, pointing out to the students what they were doing wrong), but it’s also been nice having him around to spot things I might otherwise overlook (he saved the horizontal lines of the grid from going all wonky, for example).

...And that's the news for now! In the coming days I'll sketch the vertical lines of the grid, and then start sketching individual countries. Send good thoughts my way that students continue to show up to help! Thanks for tuning in, and for your support.