“Trust is a resource that increases rather than decreases through being used. It can become depleted if not used”

Howdy folks, and welcome back to yet another addition of my experience in Cambodia. Lets start out with an update on my host family life. I love my host family very much, they are my world over here. That being said, there have been a few obstacles in the integration process. First of all, cultural differences of how people act and care for one another are different than that of the United States, so it is difficult for me to pick up on certain social ques. Secondly, the language for obvious reasons. Third, the family is very busy with their daily lives and work so we don’t get much time to just hang out together. Fourth, the food stall out front of the house gets a good bit of traffic and there are tons of kids hanging out with my cousins, so there is usually a crowd so i’m not bonding 1 on 1. One challenge has been that I almost always eat alone. For breakfast and lunch the family is busy working and I get fed when I walk home from the Health Center. For dinner, they feed me first, then afterward they eat. It feels very awkward to me coming from an American Culture, however, in Cambodia, I think it’s is a sign of respect that I eat first. I have tried to express this difference to the family and have asked to not be treated differently and I would be thrilled to eat with them, but so far it has been a struggle. Fortunantly, I understand and appreciate their actions, but it’s a little frustrating that as soon as my spoon hits the empty bowl, they clear the plate and all sit down as a family. On the other hand, it has been amazing how close I have gotten with the family since we struggle with language and our cultures are different. They certainly have nothing but the best interests for me, and my host mother especially I think pulls strings for me around the community. For example, I was asking how to best meet school directiors around the community, and randomly a school director showed up and ate lunch with me the following day…coincidence? Possibly, but I think my host mother has a little bit of my biological mother in her and was looking out for me.

“Ah-Tee” going for a run

Speaking of school directors, one morning I ventured to the local middle school in hopes of meeting the school director, luckily she was the first person I met! She is the sweetest woman and was very patient with me and would rephrase things in different words if I didn’t understand them, bless those beautiful souls who do this! After chatting for an hour or two, she invited me to her house that afternoon to hang out. Later on, I bought a banana bunch and located the house. I met her family and some neighbors, all great people and I’m always thrilled to build a relationship with the school director.

Awhile back I met a fellow named “Sith” who spoke decent English and we exchanged phone numbers, one weeked he called and invited me to his house. He lives about an hour bike ride away on the far side of my commune. My initial route still had some flooding and when the water exceeded the height of my bike tires, I turned back. I attempted to get to his village from another direction and encounted some beat up roads. The floods had knocked out large sections of the road and villagers had build make shift bridges out of a single tree and a bamboo hand rail to cross. I shouldered my bike and balanced across the swift waters. Many houses in his village were still flooded, I can’t imagine what it would have looked like a week earlier at the peak of the flood. Sith’s family was super friendly and hooked me up with some fresh cut coconuts to drink the milk out of. He lives next to a giant lake, so we made future plans to go for a swim.

An older cousin test riding my bike

One day at the health center last week my friend came in, I asked him why and he pointed to his wife holding a 6 day old baby! He was glowing and is so happy to have his first child and son. I got to hold it for some time and it looked just like him. Bought a soccerball this week for all the children to use and leave it outside under the stairs so they can play with it anytime they like. So far so good, we pass around and play a few small games near the house most evenings. I chalk that up as a success and happy to see it getting used and kids laughing and playing. I was in the bathroom and saw my first large scorpion, he was just hanging out, but now I make sure to check my clothes and shoes every morning.

The students of my friends volunteer English class in town

One evening my brother in law invited me to his father’s house the following day. I inquired what was the occassion, but did not decipher the response. So the next morning I set off for his father’s house solo, upon arrival, I began my formal greetings to the elders nearby, but immediatly his father told me to go upstairs. I got to the top of there stairs and in the house was about 30 grandmothers in their white’s, a few grandfathers, and a handful of monks. I was instructed to take a seat as I observed some folks offering large platters of food to the monks. After the monks ate, the food was distrubuted to us, so I ate with one kindly grandfather. After eating, the real fun began, keep in mind that I have no idea what the occasion is that we are all gathered for, these are simply my observations: The monks laid out a white sheet on the floor and emptied an entire 50kg bag of dried rice onto it. They then sculpted it into a body, drawing a face, arms, legs, etc and bunches of bananas were laid on top as if the rice body was holding them. Afterwards, the whole rice body was wrapped up in the sheet. And stumps of banana trees were placed in 4 corners around the body with candles and insense in the stumps. The father of the house kneeled at the foot of the rice body. A spool of white thread was brought up the stairs (I never did find out where the end was tied to), it was run accross the rafters to the far side of the room, then around the 4 corner banana stumps three times so as to form a boxing ring of sorts (think of the three ropes and the turnbuckles), the thread was then run to the monks and around a bucket of water with 3 candles on top, and finially the thread was run over the rice body and terminated on two loops which were hung on the ears of the father. Then the monks chanted, and chanted, and chanted…and chanted, we sat on the wooden floor with our legs to the side and hands in prayer position for 3 hours, talk about sore legs and butt, and sweat a lot, not to mention I had to pee! When the ceremony ended, I hobbled down the stairs and to the bathroom, only to come out and see a foreigner! Her name was Rachel, she was in Cambodia for two weeks volunteering with many cambodian youth living in Siem Reap to help victims of the flooding in our area. They were passing through, saw the gathering and distributed some food to the crowd, it was a joyous occasion for all. One of the students from Siem Reap spoke great English, so I took the opportunity to ask him about the ceremony. As it turns out, the house was fairly new and it was a “house warming” of sorts. He told me that Cambodian people believe every tree has a spirit, so when trees are cut down to build a house, the ceremony is a way of keeping the spirits from haunting the house.

Kicked something hard playing soccer in the yard. Just for the record, I scored!

After the house warming ceremony, I hopped on my bike and rode 20km to the village of two other volunteers, Meghan and Emily, to check out their neck of the woods. It was great to see their shining faces and they made a delicious attempt at making “pizza”, the dessert pizza was especially scrumptions. We went to the high school where Emily teaches to meet with a handful of kids to play on the playground, we ran on the slides, kicked around a soccer ball, used the see-saws, the swings, we lived it up, even put on a relay race before Meghan made a quick health pitch to them about the importance of exercise! Now that we had worked up a sweat, it was time to cannonball into the local irrigation canal for a swim with all the munchkins. This was our chance for a good workout, endlessly throwing kids, they love it! It was fun to see a different village, some familiar faces and speak some colloquial English.

Swimming with Meghan and Emily!

 

Swimming

 

One more with funny faces!

On Tuesday, Oct 15th, 2013 we had a national holiday to celebrate the one year anniversary of the death of the King’s father. I spent the morning at the commune center where some important folks in the commune came out to pray, eat and hang out. These are very important occasions because relationships are everything, and I think having a foreigner present might be a sign of credibility at community events.

What an incredible experience this has been so far, both good and bad, easy and hard, it covers the whole spectrum in a matter of hours, it is a magnificent roller coaster of emotion. In one day I can have the worst and best day, and then back again, every little action and interaction is amplified 10 fold to my American life, sensory overload! My high school JV lacrosse coach gave some of the most incredible speech’s i’ve ever heard, I remember many of them to this day and have frequently drawn upon them during races, hikes, adventures and life when the going is brutal. One particular statement I have always kept near my heart. After losing a hard fought game in the pouring rain (to a team we would later beat in overtime for the championship!) he instructed us to make a mental file cabinet of our feelings, and to put that feeling of losing and how aweful it felt to draw upon at a later date in order to dig even deeper. I have done this ever since that day, the best feelings and the worst. While the files are rapidly growing here in Cambodia, it allows me to know that no matter how bad I feel, things will get better, and that when i’m on top of the world to enjoy the moment but brace yourself, because you will come back down. Thanks to all the coaches out there, not only for teaching us to love exercise, but also the life lessons that go with it!

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” -Albert Camus

Holy Cow time flies. I thought I would be able to post something every week, but between not having internet access in the commune and still figuring out daily life, the days slip by. The most recent updates include flooding, spending the night at the temple, eating herbal concoctions with some grandmas, scorpions, and a miscommunicated health message.

Tom Cruise has nothing on this cat

I have wanted a Khmer tutor in town for some time, but gave it a couple of weeks to meet people and weigh my potential options. I settled on a student in 12th grade at the high school. She speaks good English and volunteers to teach students at night in her house. Plus, it will be great practice for her English as well. We have been studying for about 3 weeks now and it is going well, I learn a ton and every day when the hour is up I still have a million questions for the next day. We study on a slatted wooden table under her house…there are some distractions. Children and adults gather to watch and laugh, but it’s all in good fun. There is a rice husking machine next door, so some days there is a noisy motor running. One day some men decided to grab two roosters and have a cock fight about 20 feet away for a half hour. It’s surprisingly easy to block out everything, just some interesting observations I have made. My teacher’s mother works in the next state over because they pay better for rice farmers. She recently came home for about 2 weeks because of all the flooding. She gives me a hard time, but I think it’s tough love, we have some good laughs and she told me she would miss me this week when she goes back to work. Recently, the mother invited me to learn to make a ratan basket…heck yeah I want to learn to make a ratan basket! It was tough on the finger tips and some of the braiding took a little practice. When all was finished, she told me it was bad and I did it wrong and I could keep it, but she was just busting my chops, it’s beautiful. Due to the Cambodian Culture and genders, men and women do not hang out in close quarters unless they are in a committed relationship. This has been a slight concern of mine choosing her as a tutor since rumors could damage her reputation, and my effectiveness in the village. We’ll see how things continue to develop, so far so good, it’s been a good decision.

My tutor’s family

My Tutor taking my bike for a test ride

People in Cambodia frequently keep a bucket near their bed called a “chamber pot” for when they need to pee at night. This has been great for me since the bathroom is a seperate outhouse. Plus, my stomach hurt one night and I threw up in the bucket, now that’s multi-purpose! I figured out that fried duck eggs were to blame, so I cut them from the diet for the time being.
I got my hair cut! I wanted to wait to get to perment site for this to I could build an additional relationship. I asked my host mom where I could get it done, she directed me to the place. At this time, my little cousin, maybe 5 years old, asked if I was scared to go alone. My mom told him to go with me, so he climbed onto the luggage rack of my bike and off we went, just the bro’s! The haircut was fun, got to chat it up with some locals and the man doing the haircut had never cut a foreigners hair. He did not trim the top as much as I would have liked, so the next day I got it touched up by a friend in town.
Many of you may be familiar with the card game busted, at least all my cousins will be! I was able to teach all the kids the game and it has been a big success, they call the game “one card” in Khmer and still don’t know when to yell BUSTED, they just blurt it out whenever they are dealt a king and everyone repeats it and has a good laugh. I chalk it up as a success.
I can’t believe how far my language has come in just one month. There is no English speakers in my family, at work, and I can count on one hand the amount of English speakers I have met in the entire Commune. You might say, I get lots of practice. The first weeks were a doozy, and I still understand very little of what is going on, but I have some inclinging of the overall meaning that people are expressing to me. The basic small talk questions are second nature now, so until the conversation veers, I can usually fake my way through! Lots of smiling and nodding.

Be jealous

The NGO RACHA had a meeting at out health center for two days. All of the village health volunteers were invited for the training, so it was a fantastic way for me to meet everyone. I didn’t understand much of the meeting, but I got to introduce myself and was later asked to tell everyone a little about what I hoped to help out with. RACHA and the world food program will be distributing a nutritious food powder next week to all the villages, so it will be good exposure for me to help out with. I get a lot of un-earned respect from everyone, the doctors at the HC and from RACHA come back to my house for lunch and I get to eat with everyone. I mostly practice listening and try to laugh when everyone else does.
The former generation of volunteers (K6’s) invited everyone in our province to Siem Reap one weekend for us to meet and get to know each other. It was a great time, they are super friendly and supportive, they showed us all the good places to eat and things to see around town. It was nice to take a day off and just veg out, at site we are working 100% of the time, there are eyes on our every action and word travels fast.

Two little cousins

At the beginning of October, we celebrated the holiday of Pechum Ben. This holiday is for deceased ancestors and lasts 15 days. Each night, people make small balls of sticky rice at the temple, and in the morning, before the sun comes up, they throw the rice balls into baskets. This ritual is intended to keep the spirits of our ancestors happy and to not haunt us. Perhaps, that’s not an exact meaning, but that’s what I have interpreted this far. One day, I came home and my little cousins asked me to sleep at the temple that night with grandma (she sleeps at the temple all 15 days), I was stoked! Off we went, me riding the bike, two cousins in tow on my luggage rack 3km down sloppy dirt roads to the Temple. There were grandmothers galore! Grandmothers (or yay’s as they are called) and well respected and are pretty cool people in any culture. I sat with my grandmother and chatted with her friends as best as I could do, afterwards the monks chanted for awhile and blessed the rice, during that ceremony, they throw water out in the crowd for a blessing, maybe it was just coincidence and I sat in the splash zone, or maybe the monks thought it would be funny to soak the foreigner, either way, everyone was having a good laugh. We then formed our rice balls and turned in for the night. I did not bring my mosquito net with me, and Malaria (as well as several other mosquito borne diseases) are present in Cambodia. My grandfather in law invited me to sleep in his mosquito net with him on the concrete floor of the temple, awesome. Before bed I sat with some grandmothers, and they were showing me their little baskets where they eat some medicinal herbs every day, they showed me the protocol for assembling everything. First take a leaf, smear on some white paste, then stick it in your mouth. Second, use a nut cracker, crack open a large green nut and put the seed in your mouth. Break off a small bit of two different barks and put them in your mouth. And what do you get? First and foremost, and awesome bonding experience and histarical laughter, but you also get a very bitter mouth. They could tell it wasn’t for me and let me spit it out after a minute or so. I turned in for bed around 9, excited for the rice throwing food fight! I woke up several times in anticipation, and not having a clock with me, just looked over at grandpop next to me who was sound asleep. I later heard a drum beat a few times loudly, grandpop still sleeping, I followed his que and went back to sleep, this legendary man who sleeps at the temple isn’t going to sleep through the ceremony right…right? A bit later I heard the cousins yelling for Uncle Joel so I got up, “time to go home” they said. Whelp, I missed it. Turns out it’s not an epic food fight though, but I still plan to catch it next year.

Making rice and pork rolls for Pechum Ben with my host mom (left) and aunt (orange)

Now for a quick plug on bicycling in Cambodia. It rains every day during the wet season, the dir roads are no match, they have huge potholes, lots of them, and it’s 75% mud. Now picture my little female cousin riding an adults bike, she can’t reach the peddals. One method, is to stand up all the time and not use the seat, I see this a lot. The other method she uses, is to sit on the seat and just push the pedal as far as she can until she can’t reach it, then let it go, and catch the upcoming pedal on the other side and contine this method of only pedaling the top half of a pedal stroke. It’s also 5:00AM in the morning so it’s pitch black outside and can’t see the road. She is also riding a single speed city cruiser complete with chain gaurd and large fenders. In the states, I have raced mountain bikes for over 4 years, and i’m a full grown man on a mountin bike that fits me. I struggled to keep up with her.

Two cousins playing in a rain storm

The final day of Pechum Ben is a day of the feast, everyone goes to the temple in the morning. Unfortunantly, my family was going to a Temple near Siem Reap where the grandmother of my brother-in-law was staying because she was sick. I threw on my Sunday best and decided to fly solo to the local Temple anyhow. It was overwhelming. Lots of people, so little language, and not familiar with the culture. I saw one or two familiar faces, including one cousin who was on his way out, but decided to stay with me and show me around, I was very glad to have him. I met another man I knew in town and was chatting, when suddenly I was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with about 300 people with bowls of rice in hand. My friend gave me a rice dish and we fought through the crowd to a table with lots of large bowls, we put a little rice in each one for the monks. I had no idea what was going on, and i’m a giant foreigner in the sea of people, it was comical. After I made it out the other end alive, my friend invited me to eat with his family, it was delicious, and I really appreciate the generosity and warmth of the community around me.

Pechum Ben Ceremony

For Pechum Ben we had 5 days off work, it rained as usual, so I hung out around the house mostly. I was starting to get some cabin fever one day so I had to change up the pace and went for a walk. I got about 100 yards down the road before I was invited to hang out under the house of a neighbor. I hung out for an hour or two and they invited me back for dinner. I went back for dinner later, 3 generations living in a small palm frond house. We sat on a rice mat on the dirt under the house and ate together, flood waters to one side, a cow to another, the family motorcycle to a third. I hiked the Appalachian Trail for 6 months, but i’m always surprised how going for a walk can cure many things.
It seems that extended family comes together for Pechum Ben, my mothers family had some folks come in for the day and hang out at the house. It was a great chance for me to ask all the questions of what children belong to who and who is married to whom else. It reminded me of how important family is, how much I will miss my own with the upcoming holidays, and how thankful I am to have come from a tight knit extended family on both sides.
I finially broke out the laptop with the kids and have been trying to ease them into my stuff. They enjoy playing games and we watch cartoons that I got from another volunteer. Unfortunantly, I don’t have an internet connection in the commune, so I can’t show them some things i’d like to (such as pictures of halloween when i’m trying to describe a jack-o-lantern!).

Playing computer games

Nothern Cambodia has gotten a lot of flooding this year and one day the kids asked me to go swimming with them. When we got up the road a bit, the water was well over the road and flowing strong. For about 3 days the road was under water in sections and chunks had been washed out. Lots of people from the village come out and spectate, play in the water, and help carry motorcycles and bicycles accross the water. A few days later, some men had constructed a temporary wooden bridge over one of the worst sections. A large bridge between myself and the main town was also getting hit hard. When I biked down to check it out, there were tons of police and other men making sand bags to keep the shores from flooding. A little later, I was jumping off the bridge with some locals and one cousin, it was a blast. And not to brag, but on they way down to the bridge, I had 4 people on my bike! I peddaled, I had two cousins on the luggage rack, and one of the small boys sat on the top tube between my legs…LOY! (“Loy” – literally translates as “money” but it is also used by kids to say “Cool!”)
One night, after dinner, I sat at the table out front of the house with a younger cousin.

Temporary bridge where the road washed out

Highschool

Flood

Floodwaters

It was getting late, but he was being chatty and I think was telling me some secrets, because he kept looking around for other people, I couldn’t translate it unfortunantly. Later one, I cought the words “joo-uk ba-rei” which means to smoke cigarettes. I took this opportunity to tell him how bad they were for people and how my grandmother in the USA died from smoking cigarettes. He seemed shocked, so I kept laying it on thicker and heavier, dropping some knowledge. He still didn’t understand, so I made the motion as to smoke a cigarette with two fingers. As it would turn out, he had been using the words “ja’rook brei” which is simply salted pork. Oh well, I confirmed that my grandmother did not in fact die from salted pork and everyone loves to hear him retell the story.

Playing in the flood waters

My little cousin “ah-tee”