A New Experience of Phnom Penh

On Sunday I went to Phnom Penh with Ohn to visit some of her relatives there, including her mom who's been staying with them for a while since she's been sick, and her daughter, Liya, who was returning from a trip to Mondolkiri, a province in the east famous for its waterfalls and coffee plantations, and Sihanoukville, a beach town in the south. They live in a huge house—basically a mansion by Khmer standards— and, as it’s been explained to me many times, “gkay mein” (“they have”). In other words, they are the "haves” as opposed to the “have nots” of Khmer society.

Ohn informed me I’d be going with her while we were making sandwiches at her house on Saturday. I was lathering peanut butter onto slices of bread as usual when she said, “Tomorrow, you’re coming with me to Phnom Penh.” I froze with the knife midway to the bread. “Um…” I stalled for time. When Ohn says something is going to happen, there's pretty much no alternative.

“Tomorrow I’m running really far… I don’t know if I’ll have the energy…” I attempted, desperate for an excuse of any kind. “Ok! So you’ll go with me to PP tomorrow! We’re leaving at 11.” “Uh... I’m really not sure.” “Alright! So I’ll see you at 11, then.” I sighed, resigned to my fate, and agreed to go.

At 7:30 the next morning Ohn called me: “The touri (van) is coming to get you at 10. Ok?” Being well aware at this point that I needed to just go with the flow I said, “Ok.” The touri came and picked me up at 10, and after circling around to different houses to fill up the van, we stopped at Ohn’s and picked her and a friend up too. Ohn was wearing a giant floppy hat, mismatched clothes, and heels, as usual. She presented me with a yellow fruit: “Crow ohp,” she said (“good smelling”), and encouraged me to put it up to my nose to see for myself. The fruit was a plai jan, a yellow pulpy fruit with a smooth exterior. The three of us kept hold of our plai jan on the way to Phnom Penh, periodically putting them up to our noses to smell and against our cheeks for their coolness.

After getting to Phnom Penh, we grabbed a tuk tuk to head over to Ohn’s bong pu’ohns’ (relatives’) house. They were in an area I’d never been to before, which isn’t surprising since I typically occupy about a ten block radius of Phnom Penh when I’m hanging out with other volunteers. Ohn’s relatives' house was huge… I mean really: massive. I’ve never seen a house so big in Cambodia before. The house was very tall and very narrow. There were four floors, each with more than one room but not more than three. The kids all have their own rooms with big beds and air conditioning units. There's an exercise room with an elliptical and a treadmill, and the main feature of the downstairs living room is an expansive flat-screen TV. The kitchen has a stainless steel refrigerator (I was aghast), and the front room was full of very intricately carved, very expensive wooden figurines of frogs with golden coins in their mouths for luck, and ornate reliefs of Angkor Wat.

We ate in the kitchen sitting at a tiny table—Ohn, her friend, and me. The others had already eaten so they just stood around and watched us haha. (I’m used to it by now so it was fine). We had rice (of course), boiled and syrupy sweet eggs, a fish soup with wilted greens, and, (this is my favorite and I know they prepared it because Ohn told them it was) fried eggs with onions. It sounds boring and simple but I promise it is the most delicious thing in the world.

After lunch, S’rey Pit (pronounced "bpate"), the youngest of Ohn’s relatives, brought out her English book for school. We sat around, flipping through the pages, me pointing out various things and quizzing them. I was impressed with how much she knew for being only six! She definitely has my younger students beat (however, she’s also getting a lot better schooling in Phnom Penh than they have access to in my village). Ohn’s mom made me coffee from Mondolkiri, making it extra sweet with condensed milk and lots of sugar. I will definitely miss these sugary coffees when I leave, no matter how many pounds they’ve added to my frame or how bad they are for my teeth.

Ohn brought a bunch of mangoes with from our village, since her relatives don’t have the space for mango trees in their small yard, so we sliced those open and ate the meat with chili salt, making appreciative noises when we'd get pieces that were sweet, and sucking in our cheeks when we got one that was too sour.

S’rey Pit’s shiny black blue hair was calling to me at this point, so I gave her a French braid, which I was happy to discover I still know how to do.

Ohn’s relatives brought out a big loaf of sliced bread, just purchased at a nearby bakery for my benefit, and two jars of jam: strawberry and apricot, which everyone called “peach.” Since I was thought to be the most seasoned jam spreader, I was given the duty of spreading jam onto slices of bread, taking orders from various relatives for which kind. I gave Liya, Ohn’s daughter, a little extra jam so she’d know she's still my favorite, even in the midst of all these new kids. Despite my going over to her house to make sandwiches for almost two years, Liya has taken a long time to fully warm up to me, so I didn’t want to compromise our newfound closeness. The kids topped their pieces of jammed bread with a layer of sweetened condensed milk and devoured them in seconds.

At around 3:00 it was time to go. Ohn, her friend, Liya and I all loaded our things onto a tuk tuk and set off for p’saa towit (the small market)- the meeting spot for vans going to different provinces. First though, I insisted we make a stop at Sorya, the mall in Phnom Penh, for ice cream, since Ohn’s friend had never been there before. We walked into the brightly lit and air conditioned mall, our senses immediately assaulted by fluorescent lights, multi-colored store signs, music from different directions, etc. I steered us to the left and into Swenson’s for ca-rem (ice cream). We picked our flavors: strawberry for Liya and Ohn, chocolate brownie for Ohn’s friend, and my usual: mocha almond fudge. We wandered around the mall with our cones, drifting into “Lucky,” the supermarket. We circled the store—meandering through the frozen meats, the draft from the freezers raising the hair on our arms, the raw smells entering our nostrils and souring the sweetness of our snack.

Ohn pointed out various things that got her attention: “Look how big that watermelon is!” “Look at all the ice cream!” I followed her and the others around the store like a little kid, anxious about how quickly my ice cream was melting, distracted by the activity of the store. Liya picked out two expensive yogurt drinks—a blue and a red one—each costing more than a dollar. I knew it was no small purchase for Ohn. As we eyed various items in the store, trying to fit into this unfamiliar place with our unfamiliar snack, I looked at other foreigners from a displaced perspective, feeling more different from them than similar as Ohn spoke Khmer to me at a rapid fire. We finished our cones and stepped back outside into the afternoon heat, loading ourselves onto the tuk tuk and continuing our journey. I noticed a plumeria tree on the way and asked how to say it in Khmer: "picka jopie," Ohn said.

In the touri, on our way back to Pearaing, I drifted in and out of consciousness, exhausted from the day. The van reeled and jerked as we navigated the dusty road, pockmarked with potholes from construction. Liya and I shared the front seat, the breeze from the drive giving way to a persistent heat as we lurched and weaved. Liya rested her head on my shoulder and I held my breath, not wanting to let the moment go before I had to. A headache that had been threatening all day manifested in full force and I rested my head in my hand against the base of the window, feeling weary and content as Ohn’s boisterous laugh came in and out of the backdrop of my experience.

As I so often do when I’m leaving for or coming back from a journey, I found myself thinking about how I’m going to say “goodbye” to my host mom and dad, and all the other people close to me here in less than five months, and a knot formed in my throat. Not today, I thought to myself and felt comforted. I don’t need to think about that just yet. And I drifted back into a restless sleep, the lights of the oncoming cars passing over my eyes and intensifying the pain behind them.

~~~~

Eating rice at Ohn’s relatives' house

Liya

The kids

In the touri

Ohn

Library Project Update: Book Buying and Organization

The last time I mentioned my library project on here I think I had finished painting the inside walls, tables, bookshelves, and shutters, as well as painting the world map and shutters outside. Well, it’s now six months later and I just now have some new things to say…

The thing about doing a project in Cambodia is it’s never going to go according to plan. Deadlines will come and go with minimal activity, there will be periods of complete stagnation and then fleeting bursts of productivity. You have to be flexible and patient, and if you’re not naturally those things (i.e. me), you have to try to learn to be if you don’t want to go crazy.

Once all the aesthetic stuff was finished, I was feeling sort of overwhelmed with the prospect of addressing the actual technical issues at hand (but that's hard!). Since the librarian was filling in for a teacher who was in Korea from October until just a few weeks ago, the library was never open to students, or to anyone for that matter.

After lamenting about this conundrum to various people for some time, and talking to my friends Diana and Emma- both PCVs who’ve undertaken library projects- I realized I just needed to take charge to get things moving and not worry about the circumstances being perfect. If I waited around for everything to be in its right place, nothing would ever happen.

So, I decided to go to Phnom Penh to buy books. I invited my three student helpers from this summer to come with, but one of their dads wouldn’t let her go, so the other two didn’t want to go without her. Garrett agreed to come help, with the promise of pizza and DQ as the reward...

We started at IBC— International Book Center. There’s a good selection of Khmer fiction here, as well as some good reference books about English grammar, dictionaries, books of Khmer proverbs in Khmer and translated into English, etc.

receipt from IBC

nom

After lunch, we continued on to Monument, another bookstore which also has a great selection of fiction, cookbooks, and history books, but which is a lot more pricey than IBC.

a favorite from Monument

Getting everything back to my site was a bit of a challenge…

When we got back my librarian met us at the school to help us unload everything.

The next day we got to work organizing the books onto shelves, and labeling sections with a color-coded and number organized system (a big thank you to Diana whose system this is!)

It works like this: the color of the sticker indicates the subject/category of the book (i.e. science). The number indicates a subcategory (biology), and a "K" indicates the book is in Khmer.

key

After getting everything organized, I was anxious to open the library up to students so they could see the new books. My librarian replied that we couldn’t open up the library to students yet since all the other books in the library still weren’t organized…

Sigh. Here’s the thing. There have been boxes of books sitting in the library for years, waiting for No (librarian) to organize them. I was struggling not to lose it at this point, but luckily my co-teacher has more grace than I do and suggested we meet to help him organize the books. After some hesitation on his part ("Friday's a holiday, though...") we managed to rope him into meeting on Thursday. And then again on Friday. And now again tomorrow...

organizing the books

We've been unloading box after box of books, stamping them, documenting their quantity and date of donation, and recording all that in a logbook.

some gems

So, there you have it! I have no idea when this project will be completed, but it seems we’re on the right track towards eventually opening it up to students, which is the ultimate goal (for me, at least). I will keep you updated on its developments and noteworthy happenings as they occur. Keep my library project in your thoughts and send positive, productive energy my way!

Hope you all are healthy and doing well.

Change

My parents have a home movie of me from when I was about three, eating a popsicle on the couch in the living room of our old house with the blue shag carpeting. In it, I am seriously *loving* this popsicle- like, nothing can distract my attention away from this thing. My dad is patiently filming me (why is this entertaining??) and at one point asks: “Leah, what color is your popsicle?” I look up at him and without hesitation say, “It’s blue.” Very self-assured, very confident in this assessment. But then I experience a flicker of doubt, and upon looking down at my popsicle discover it to be, in fact, red. I quickly reneg my statement: “It’s wed, it’s wed” I say, nodding my head, utterly sure this time.

I feel like this anecdote is kind of a good analogy for life: we think one thing, we learn something that challenges that belief, and, if we allow ourselves to remain open to new ways of thinking/being, we adapt based on what we learned. Or, to put it in more active terms: we try one thing, it doesn’t work, we try another.

Since being in Cambodia, I’ve had to renegotiate the way I’m going about things on an almost daily basis. Sometimes it’s something as small as what I’m eating or when I’m going about completing certain tasks (washing clothes, writing lesson plans, etc.), and other times it’s something a lot bigger, like how I’m interacting with my students or my co-teacher. In my experience, if you’re paying attention, each day can reveal a lot.

I’ve had moments in teaching I’m not too proud of, in which I’ve made students feel belittled and condescended. I’ve also had moments in which I feel connected to my students on a level I’d never have thought possible a year ago, in which we're both better off for having come to class that day, for having lifted each other up out of whatever funk/bout of listlessness that could have developed otherwise. There have been moments I've let slip by in my distraction, thinking about some problem or anxiety of my own, and others I've embraced whole-heartedly, letting things develop as they may and not forcing my will on them.

In about six months, I will move on from this place I’ve called home for the past 18 months. I thought about this fact the other day on a walk and promptly burst into tears. I have NO IDEA what life is going to hold for me after this. I have some hopes, and rough sketches in mind, but really, no one can say.

The idea I wanted to illustrate in that anecdote above is this: life is always changing, and that's okay. Our ideas of what we think we know are always going to be challenged, so it's best if we just accept this fact and allow ourselves to remain open to new ways of being and doing so we can grow into better humans. In times I remain most open to evolution and change, I’m happiest. In times I remain most stagnant and unyielding, I’m most miserable.

...And the thing about this all is I actually hate change more than anyone I know (fact: I cried when my dad shaved off his mustache). I love consistency, and even though I love getting out of a routine, I also love to have one. I do know, however, that accepting change as inevitable is the only way for me to find contentment. Little Leah showed she was not opposed to reevaluating her ideas of what she thought she knew about her beloved popsicle, and I'd hate to disappoint her.

~~~

And now for some pictures from a few of my recent escapades. Enjoy! :)

My dad's visit

Yes, this is a real burger, with red meat and everything.

My friend Debbie's visit

My morning of fishing with my students

Liya, Ohn's daughter

That’s does it for now. :) Be on the look-out for a post about my ongoing library project in the near future… Hope you all are healthy and happy.