Mao, ankoie leng. Literally, ‘Come, sit-play.’ More accurately, this might be translated as ‘Why don’t you hang out and chill with me for a while?’ One of the wonderful things about Cambodia (and India, too) is that nothing is ever so pressing that it can’t wait for a bit, and even if the hours are long, work is hardly ever a solitary thing. There is always a friend to keep you company. In India, even the hairdressers who hung a mirror on a tree and put a chair on the sidewalk always had a buddy or two just hanging out with them. Ankoie lenging is an important part of life here, and not only for people who you’re already friends with. When a sudden downpour hits, you can stop at the nearest vendor’s stall/gas station/moto repair hut. You will undoubtedly be presented with some plastic chairs and invited to ankoie leng. Buying something from someone at the market? Mao, ankoie leng! And if you’re the strange new foreigner in town, you will undoubtedly be invited to ankoie leng well...everywhere.
For me, ankoie lenging sounds unappealing. Hey Kaitlin, want to go to a party with a bunch of people you don’t know and try to make small talk? It wouldn’t be my first choice. How about doing that AND trying to think of things to say in a language you can only speak a little bit? Umm...are there other options?
Today, I was off from school for the afternoon, so I decided to finally go take a piece of cloth I bought last week to be tailored into a teaching skirt. Since I was only going a few hundred yards, I decided to walk for a change. As it turns out, riding my bike around has been keeping me fairly isolated outside of school. On the way back from the tailor’s shop, I was invited to stop and ankoie leng at:
- the road-side stand where we eat dessert every night, where I chatted with my dessert ming and her three customers
- the beer shop where the son has been saying hello to me every time I ride by, where I was presented with a free coke and spent almost an hour chatting with the mom
- the market stall with grilled bananas, where I eventually was talking to a group of about 10 different vendors who came to ask questions of the foreigner and
- my neighbors’ house where one of the teachers at my school lives and where I also chatted with some of my students buying books from the book stall there.
I survived them all. I may have even enjoyed myself. Lucky, since I sense there may be more ankoie lenging in my future.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Khmanglish of the Week
(from the back of a bag of dried fruit)
Throughout the entire process in making the chips, no chemicals are added to the chips at all. The fruits and vegetables are specially processed in order to ensure that their natural flavour and goodness are retained.
These products have also a good smelling and crunchy feature which gives a good taste and provide more nutritive facts, vitamins, mineral salt necessary to the organism and protecting from the extra glucoza
Throughout the entire process in making the chips, no chemicals are added to the chips at all. The fruits and vegetables are specially processed in order to ensure that their natural flavour and goodness are retained.
These products have also a good smelling and crunchy feature which gives a good taste and provide more nutritive facts, vitamins, mineral salt necessary to the organism and protecting from the extra glucoza
Crash
Two things that do not exist in (rural) Cambodia: stretchers and police tape.
A few evenings ago, I was headed to exercise in the rice fields, as usual, when I came upon a even larger traffic jam of students than is usually the case at the 5 o’clock hour. As I got closer, I realized everyone was stopped in their tracks and gaping at something. Then I spotted a downed motorbike in the road, then another.
Moto accidents are very, very common in Cambodia. It is fairly normal to see three, four, even five people on the back of a moto, most often without helmets. My little nephew at my training host family was in a wreck during my first month here that scraped up the side of his face pretty well. Just last week, the big piece of gossip in town was a moto crash in the next town over that killed a brand new, just-out-of-college teacher. This was my first time seeing one up close.
My host mom motioned me over to the side of the road to stand and watch with everyone else. There were two groups on opposite sides of the street surrounding two accident victims (although I was told later there were actually four people involved) who had been laid in the dirt. I would guess the crowd of onlookers grew to about 200 in all, although traffic was still slowly moving through the scene, the cars weaving between the two motos that were left sprawling in the street. After we had watched for five minutes or so, a group of men helping one of the victims hoisted him up by his arms and legs, the man screaming in pain as they did. There was no attempt to stabilize his neck and back. There was no waiting for a stretcher, or even a doctor (like my host dad, who was at my house about 200 yards away). And where did they take him? Of course, to another moto. They plopped the man down, and he flopped against the moto driver. They had to pick up his legs to stop his feet from dragging on the ground.
Soon my host mom motioned for us to go, and as we left, I saw the police arrive and start drawing chalk outlines of the two bikes. That one still has me puzzled. We headed out to our jog. At the time, the accident didn’t look so serious, since both of the victims I saw were conscious and responsive, if uncomfortable. While eating our nightly post-exercise dessert, my host mom got a phone call and reported that one of the men had a broken leg (the word for which, eerily, I had just learned in a Khmer lesson two hours before). Later that evening, my mom gave me another update. Two people were seriously injured and were taken to the hospital in Phnom Penh. One had broken something in the ribcage area. My host mom said, “Mun tohan slap howie.” He’s not dead yet. I felt like a 7-year-old as I asked ... “Is he going to die?” ... “We don’t know yet. Maybe.” I had no idea.
K4s, be careful out there!
A few evenings ago, I was headed to exercise in the rice fields, as usual, when I came upon a even larger traffic jam of students than is usually the case at the 5 o’clock hour. As I got closer, I realized everyone was stopped in their tracks and gaping at something. Then I spotted a downed motorbike in the road, then another.
Moto accidents are very, very common in Cambodia. It is fairly normal to see three, four, even five people on the back of a moto, most often without helmets. My little nephew at my training host family was in a wreck during my first month here that scraped up the side of his face pretty well. Just last week, the big piece of gossip in town was a moto crash in the next town over that killed a brand new, just-out-of-college teacher. This was my first time seeing one up close.
My host mom motioned me over to the side of the road to stand and watch with everyone else. There were two groups on opposite sides of the street surrounding two accident victims (although I was told later there were actually four people involved) who had been laid in the dirt. I would guess the crowd of onlookers grew to about 200 in all, although traffic was still slowly moving through the scene, the cars weaving between the two motos that were left sprawling in the street. After we had watched for five minutes or so, a group of men helping one of the victims hoisted him up by his arms and legs, the man screaming in pain as they did. There was no attempt to stabilize his neck and back. There was no waiting for a stretcher, or even a doctor (like my host dad, who was at my house about 200 yards away). And where did they take him? Of course, to another moto. They plopped the man down, and he flopped against the moto driver. They had to pick up his legs to stop his feet from dragging on the ground.
Soon my host mom motioned for us to go, and as we left, I saw the police arrive and start drawing chalk outlines of the two bikes. That one still has me puzzled. We headed out to our jog. At the time, the accident didn’t look so serious, since both of the victims I saw were conscious and responsive, if uncomfortable. While eating our nightly post-exercise dessert, my host mom got a phone call and reported that one of the men had a broken leg (the word for which, eerily, I had just learned in a Khmer lesson two hours before). Later that evening, my mom gave me another update. Two people were seriously injured and were taken to the hospital in Phnom Penh. One had broken something in the ribcage area. My host mom said, “Mun tohan slap howie.” He’s not dead yet. I felt like a 7-year-old as I asked ... “Is he going to die?” ... “We don’t know yet. Maybe.” I had no idea.
K4s, be careful out there!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Niak Bora Tay (or, What are YOU doing here?)
Wednesday this week, I showed up to my school and quickly realized something unusual was going on. Too many of the classrooms were empty, and there was a big white van parked in the back school yard, surrounded by a group of students. I had been sitting down chatting with the other teachers (the normal thing to do for the 25-minute intervals between 40-minute classes) for a good while before someone casually mentioned that there were some people from Singapore at the school. I understood from a few vocabulary words and some gesturing that they were doing eye tests and giving out glasses. As it turned out, that was only part of it. They were a group doing community service, including English teaching. All of my teachers seemed to be in on it, but nobody had told me classes that day would be taken over by OTHER foreigners. Needless to say, my immediate reaction was to be a little territorial. Come on guys, I’m the foreigner teacher in this school. Even if I haven’t actually started teaching yet. As it turned out, the actual classroom lessons involved some Simon Says and charades, which I could tell the students didn’t really understand. (Even after 5 or 6 years of English, many of the students have little to no speaking and listening ability.) Afterwards, I asked the new foreigners to stay and talk to some of the kids who I knew would be excited to chat, even though they were too shy to approach the Singporean group themselves. Now, the students are still pretty intimidated by me, but faced with a group of 6 other foreigners, they suddenly all started turning to me for support/help/encouragement.
So it turned out alright. If nothing else, it was an example for me of how, although it really is and is going to be pretty tough sometimes, sticking around a place like this is very different from dropping in once in a while.
It was also a special treat to speak real (e.g. not extremely simple and slow) English for a bit. It’s the little things! If you would like to help me keep up my English skills beyond “What’s your name?” “How old are you?” and “What do you want to be in the future?” feel free to comment, email, write letters, Facebook, call, or even Skype me. Just think of it as an easy way to support international development work.
So it turned out alright. If nothing else, it was an example for me of how, although it really is and is going to be pretty tough sometimes, sticking around a place like this is very different from dropping in once in a while.
It was also a special treat to speak real (e.g. not extremely simple and slow) English for a bit. It’s the little things! If you would like to help me keep up my English skills beyond “What’s your name?” “How old are you?” and “What do you want to be in the future?” feel free to comment, email, write letters, Facebook, call, or even Skype me. Just think of it as an easy way to support international development work.
Top Ten
My top ten reasons why Cambodia feels like an alternate universe:
10. Trucks backing up noises. Of all the annoying Cambodia noises (roosters, hack saws, dogs fighting, blaring wedding music), this is pretty benign. But it is a very disconcerting noise because here, when trucks back up, they don’t go “BEEP BEEP BEEP” they go “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells” or “We wish you a Merry Christmas.” I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to hear Christmas music the same way again.
9. The meat market. Markets here are arranged by merchandise category, so all the people selling similar goods are in the same general area of the market. When the merchandise is meat, it results in a scene of carnage that would rival any horror movie. It’s not just the cuts of meat, it’s so totally normal that people are picking up chunks of fat or stretching rolls of skin like it’s nothing. The market in my town seems to be especially fond of pig heads.
8. The same weather every day. We’ve been here about three months; there has been no indication of the passing of time. It’s hot. It rains for a little bit every day or two. Apparently at some point it will stop raining and get hotter.
7. Nobody says “Bless you” when someone sneezes. Nobody says anything. The silence still weirds me out for some reason.
6. Power outages. They are fairly regular, but the power sort of fades out, so the tv image starts to shrink and the lights all fade until it suddenly goes dark.
5. It being perfectly fine to talk about me, or anyone else, in very crude terms. “You’re fat” is really just the tip of the iceberg. For example, my mom’s best friend’s daughter has Down’s Syndrome and Tee, the guy who lives with us to help out with the housework is almost mute/can only make a few noises. Both things were apparent to me immediately, but both things have been explained to me multiple times, in front of the individuals in question. It is fairly common for people to make fun of Tee’s speech problems to his face.
4. No one ever getting mad. Ever. See #5. People are not allowed to get mad at this. That would mean losing face.
3. Laughing at everything. See #4. Instead of getting mad, the appropriate response is to laugh. Or rather, giggle. I have yet to find a student who can talk to me for 5 minutes without breaking down into a fit of giggles. Also, anytime I start speaking Khmer to someone who doesn’t know me well, even if I don’t screw it up, it results in a fit giggles.
2. The Third Front Tooth. At first I thought it was just an anomaly on one old lady, but I soon realized that the solution here for having a gap between your two front teeth is apparently to put a third one in the middle.
1. Being stared at. All the time. Everywhere. When groups of students form outside the classroom windows to stare at me sitting and watching a class, it really does feel like I’m at a zoo, and I’m the one on display.
10. Trucks backing up noises. Of all the annoying Cambodia noises (roosters, hack saws, dogs fighting, blaring wedding music), this is pretty benign. But it is a very disconcerting noise because here, when trucks back up, they don’t go “BEEP BEEP BEEP” they go “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells” or “We wish you a Merry Christmas.” I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to hear Christmas music the same way again.
9. The meat market. Markets here are arranged by merchandise category, so all the people selling similar goods are in the same general area of the market. When the merchandise is meat, it results in a scene of carnage that would rival any horror movie. It’s not just the cuts of meat, it’s so totally normal that people are picking up chunks of fat or stretching rolls of skin like it’s nothing. The market in my town seems to be especially fond of pig heads.
8. The same weather every day. We’ve been here about three months; there has been no indication of the passing of time. It’s hot. It rains for a little bit every day or two. Apparently at some point it will stop raining and get hotter.
7. Nobody says “Bless you” when someone sneezes. Nobody says anything. The silence still weirds me out for some reason.
6. Power outages. They are fairly regular, but the power sort of fades out, so the tv image starts to shrink and the lights all fade until it suddenly goes dark.
5. It being perfectly fine to talk about me, or anyone else, in very crude terms. “You’re fat” is really just the tip of the iceberg. For example, my mom’s best friend’s daughter has Down’s Syndrome and Tee, the guy who lives with us to help out with the housework is almost mute/can only make a few noises. Both things were apparent to me immediately, but both things have been explained to me multiple times, in front of the individuals in question. It is fairly common for people to make fun of Tee’s speech problems to his face.
4. No one ever getting mad. Ever. See #5. People are not allowed to get mad at this. That would mean losing face.
3. Laughing at everything. See #4. Instead of getting mad, the appropriate response is to laugh. Or rather, giggle. I have yet to find a student who can talk to me for 5 minutes without breaking down into a fit of giggles. Also, anytime I start speaking Khmer to someone who doesn’t know me well, even if I don’t screw it up, it results in a fit giggles.
2. The Third Front Tooth. At first I thought it was just an anomaly on one old lady, but I soon realized that the solution here for having a gap between your two front teeth is apparently to put a third one in the middle.
1. Being stared at. All the time. Everywhere. When groups of students form outside the classroom windows to stare at me sitting and watching a class, it really does feel like I’m at a zoo, and I’m the one on display.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Mystery Meat
Besides the wats, the other part of this week’s Pchum Ben I have seen is that families all get together and come back ‘home,’ wherever that happens to be. Now that I have been here a week and a half, I have met five of my mom’s seven siblings and lots of cousins. It was quite a lucky break because a couple of my cousins who study in Phnom Penh speak quite good English. Being the only native English speaker around, it is a special treat to be able to chat about more than what you ate for breakfast and how many siblings you have.
The penultimate day of Pchum Ben meant a big get-together for my whole family. And, my family decided, there could be no better way to celebrate than to deconstruct an unidentified creature in the backyard. I came downstairs from my afternoon ‘nap’ to find my mom and assorted relatives all hanging out on the back stoop, chopping up various bits of anatomy. They told me a word in Khmer that I did not understand, and my mom assured me it was not pork, beef, or chicken, so it should be fine for me to eat. The concept of vegetarianism is very foreign in Cambodia, to say the least. To be helpful, one of my cousins fished into one of the bowls of meat and held up a severed head for me to see. At first I thought it was an eel. Eel is fairly common in the markets here, and we’d even had eel the other night for dinner. I had managed to avoid most of that, serving myself the banana flower chunks from the eel soup instead, until my mom said I hadn’t eaten enough and plopped a big slice of eel into my rice bowl. But no. I had told my cousin the English word for eel, and he assured me this was not it. Then I thought maybe it was some sort of reptile, although it looked awfully slimy. Then I spotted a ribcage tossed to the side. Less of a ribcage and more of a...shell. Yep, my dictionary confirmed it – it was a turtle shell. Oy vey...and what could I do but smile and nod. I will leave the rest to your imagination.
***
Khmanglish of the week
POP-UP
Brand
Interpolded tissue
Enjoy the best tendance extra soft facial tissue
The penultimate day of Pchum Ben meant a big get-together for my whole family. And, my family decided, there could be no better way to celebrate than to deconstruct an unidentified creature in the backyard. I came downstairs from my afternoon ‘nap’ to find my mom and assorted relatives all hanging out on the back stoop, chopping up various bits of anatomy. They told me a word in Khmer that I did not understand, and my mom assured me it was not pork, beef, or chicken, so it should be fine for me to eat. The concept of vegetarianism is very foreign in Cambodia, to say the least. To be helpful, one of my cousins fished into one of the bowls of meat and held up a severed head for me to see. At first I thought it was an eel. Eel is fairly common in the markets here, and we’d even had eel the other night for dinner. I had managed to avoid most of that, serving myself the banana flower chunks from the eel soup instead, until my mom said I hadn’t eaten enough and plopped a big slice of eel into my rice bowl. But no. I had told my cousin the English word for eel, and he assured me this was not it. Then I thought maybe it was some sort of reptile, although it looked awfully slimy. Then I spotted a ribcage tossed to the side. Less of a ribcage and more of a...shell. Yep, my dictionary confirmed it – it was a turtle shell. Oy vey...and what could I do but smile and nod. I will leave the rest to your imagination.
***
Khmanglish of the week
POP-UP
Brand
Interpolded tissue
Enjoy the best tendance extra soft facial tissue
Wat Outing
Today (October 8, I’m writing and posting later) is the final day of Pchum Ben, the second biggest holiday in the Khmer calendar (after Khmer New Year in April). This holiday is about ancestors and the gates of hell opening...well, Wikipedia can explain it better than I can. All I really know is what I’ve seen over the past week, and that has involved going to a lot of different wats. I’ve now visited four different wats (Buddhist temples) with my family. I think I’m finally starting to get a hang of the routine.
First, around 9am, my host mom tells me we are about to leave, so I should hurry up and get ready. If I’ve been given advance notice, I’ve already gotten into my wat-going attire – a white dress shirt and one of my two nicer sampots (traditional Khmer skirts). Then I sit around for maybe 30 minutes more while my family goes about the business of getting ready. It reminds me of waiting for my family back home to get ready for Church on any given Sunday. We all pile into the car, up to seven or eight people in my dad’s Toyota Camry. Here in Cambodia, it’s pretty typical to double-up the passenger seat and put at least four people in back. Luckily, the furthest drive this week was only about 45 minutes. (Actually, to tell the truth, I LOVE riding in cars here. I get to tour the countryside, and it’s one of the only times I get AC, so I don’t mind the crowding.) Once we arrive at the wat in question, we all pile out, grab an assortment of food from the trunk, and shuffle into the wat’s secondary building, sort of a dining hall for the monks. There are quite a few rules about eating in the monkhood. Monks only eat one big meal a day and are not allowed to eat anything between noon and dawn the following day. When they go out into the community to ask for offerings, they carry big silver bowls to collect their daily food. They are not allowed to take food into the main sanctuary building, so there is another area with a raised platform where the monks sit and eat and a lower area where everyone else can congregate. We take our shoes off at the door and claim an area of the grass mats on the floor by dropping off our assortments of offering items. I follow my host mom up to the altar area where we kneel and do three bows to show our respect to the Buddha. Somebody then hands me three sticks of incense, which I hold between my palms while somebody prays. Then I put my incense in a pot of sand to burn.
Now we start sorting the food and money offerings. We make a tray of all the items to be offered to the monks, and eventually we present it to one of the more senior monks who is in the hall accepting things. The seniority of the monks is very apparent, since they sit on their eating platform in descending order of age and/or importance. During the Khmer Rouge regime, the Buddhist establishment in Cambodia (in addition to the education system, the family unit, and so much more) was systematically destroyed, including disrobing and execution of monks, so the senior monks often appear to be fairly young. At each of the wats, probably 75% of the monks were actually young boys (maybe 8-18 years old) who often become monks either to receive schooling or to bring honor to their families. Anyway, the exchange of the offering involves some of the grandfatherly types who hang out at the wat making a presentation of our gift, including the amount of money, the name of the family, and where the family is from. Two of four times, this presentation has happened on loudspeaker. To actually give the offering is quite simple. Two or three people lift up the tray in the direction of the monk, and everyone else touches the people who are touching the tray. Then the monk touches the tray, and the transfer is complete. Now the monk can leave and the food can be set out with all the goodies brought by other families for the monks’ lunch.
At some point in the late morning, the wat grandpas start leading the whole ‘congregation’ in chants. Some are responsive, so I try to mumble along a bit. Others are recited, so I just sit in my feet-tucked-back, hands-together, head-bowed position. The chanting continues on and off, and closer to lunch time, somebody hands me a bowl of rice and a spoon. The first time this happened, nobody explained it to me, but luckily, I was pretty sure I was not supposed to start chowing down. No, the first bowl of rice has to get into the monks’ begging bowls. When I was in Thailand for the summer, we offered rice to monks two times, and they just filed past us while we knelt on the ground and put handfuls of rice into their individual bowls. Here, at least during Pchum Ben, it is more of a free-for-all. See, Khmer people are not really fans of the whole ‘standing in line’ idea. The monks’ big bowls are set out on the table, and people start to go down the row, putting a spoonful in each one. Getting started on the first bowl is the hardest part, since the end of the table is a mass of people all pushing to get to their rice spooning. After I have braved the crowd and spooned in my rice, I go back to sit. More chanting ensues. Eventually the monks arrive, and there is more chanting, now a sort of back-and-forth between the congregation and the monks. After maybe 30 minutes or so, the monks are finally allowed to eat, and I can finally break my sompeah (hands together in front of my face). Unfortunately, I have to leave my feet tucked to one side the whole time the monks are there. I’m working on building up the stamina of my back muscles. After the monks are finished and have filed out, the leftovers are redistributed to the crowd in a surprisingly orderly way that makes absolutely no sense to me. Then we get to eat! A whole array of dishes is laid out for each family, and everybody digs in together. I’ve had prahok, the pungent, disreputable fish-paste that is occasionally called the cheese of Cambodia, three times this week. And – I’ll tell you a secret – I might actually like the stuff. Finally, there is a blissful car ride home in AC and a mandatory afternoon nap to recuperate from hours of sitting and to sleep off the food coma.
First, around 9am, my host mom tells me we are about to leave, so I should hurry up and get ready. If I’ve been given advance notice, I’ve already gotten into my wat-going attire – a white dress shirt and one of my two nicer sampots (traditional Khmer skirts). Then I sit around for maybe 30 minutes more while my family goes about the business of getting ready. It reminds me of waiting for my family back home to get ready for Church on any given Sunday. We all pile into the car, up to seven or eight people in my dad’s Toyota Camry. Here in Cambodia, it’s pretty typical to double-up the passenger seat and put at least four people in back. Luckily, the furthest drive this week was only about 45 minutes. (Actually, to tell the truth, I LOVE riding in cars here. I get to tour the countryside, and it’s one of the only times I get AC, so I don’t mind the crowding.) Once we arrive at the wat in question, we all pile out, grab an assortment of food from the trunk, and shuffle into the wat’s secondary building, sort of a dining hall for the monks. There are quite a few rules about eating in the monkhood. Monks only eat one big meal a day and are not allowed to eat anything between noon and dawn the following day. When they go out into the community to ask for offerings, they carry big silver bowls to collect their daily food. They are not allowed to take food into the main sanctuary building, so there is another area with a raised platform where the monks sit and eat and a lower area where everyone else can congregate. We take our shoes off at the door and claim an area of the grass mats on the floor by dropping off our assortments of offering items. I follow my host mom up to the altar area where we kneel and do three bows to show our respect to the Buddha. Somebody then hands me three sticks of incense, which I hold between my palms while somebody prays. Then I put my incense in a pot of sand to burn.
Now we start sorting the food and money offerings. We make a tray of all the items to be offered to the monks, and eventually we present it to one of the more senior monks who is in the hall accepting things. The seniority of the monks is very apparent, since they sit on their eating platform in descending order of age and/or importance. During the Khmer Rouge regime, the Buddhist establishment in Cambodia (in addition to the education system, the family unit, and so much more) was systematically destroyed, including disrobing and execution of monks, so the senior monks often appear to be fairly young. At each of the wats, probably 75% of the monks were actually young boys (maybe 8-18 years old) who often become monks either to receive schooling or to bring honor to their families. Anyway, the exchange of the offering involves some of the grandfatherly types who hang out at the wat making a presentation of our gift, including the amount of money, the name of the family, and where the family is from. Two of four times, this presentation has happened on loudspeaker. To actually give the offering is quite simple. Two or three people lift up the tray in the direction of the monk, and everyone else touches the people who are touching the tray. Then the monk touches the tray, and the transfer is complete. Now the monk can leave and the food can be set out with all the goodies brought by other families for the monks’ lunch.
At some point in the late morning, the wat grandpas start leading the whole ‘congregation’ in chants. Some are responsive, so I try to mumble along a bit. Others are recited, so I just sit in my feet-tucked-back, hands-together, head-bowed position. The chanting continues on and off, and closer to lunch time, somebody hands me a bowl of rice and a spoon. The first time this happened, nobody explained it to me, but luckily, I was pretty sure I was not supposed to start chowing down. No, the first bowl of rice has to get into the monks’ begging bowls. When I was in Thailand for the summer, we offered rice to monks two times, and they just filed past us while we knelt on the ground and put handfuls of rice into their individual bowls. Here, at least during Pchum Ben, it is more of a free-for-all. See, Khmer people are not really fans of the whole ‘standing in line’ idea. The monks’ big bowls are set out on the table, and people start to go down the row, putting a spoonful in each one. Getting started on the first bowl is the hardest part, since the end of the table is a mass of people all pushing to get to their rice spooning. After I have braved the crowd and spooned in my rice, I go back to sit. More chanting ensues. Eventually the monks arrive, and there is more chanting, now a sort of back-and-forth between the congregation and the monks. After maybe 30 minutes or so, the monks are finally allowed to eat, and I can finally break my sompeah (hands together in front of my face). Unfortunately, I have to leave my feet tucked to one side the whole time the monks are there. I’m working on building up the stamina of my back muscles. After the monks are finished and have filed out, the leftovers are redistributed to the crowd in a surprisingly orderly way that makes absolutely no sense to me. Then we get to eat! A whole array of dishes is laid out for each family, and everybody digs in together. I’ve had prahok, the pungent, disreputable fish-paste that is occasionally called the cheese of Cambodia, three times this week. And – I’ll tell you a secret – I might actually like the stuff. Finally, there is a blissful car ride home in AC and a mandatory afternoon nap to recuperate from hours of sitting and to sleep off the food coma.
Friday, October 1, 2010
First Day of School (or: Nobody Told Me the Prime Minister Was Coming!)
October 1 – Back to school day for children across Cambodia. First day of school as a teacher for me. Well, first day AT the school in that capacity. In reality, there was no actual school - no classes that is – just one big, very long ceremony this morning. I showed up to the school, as requested, at 6:45. Now, I am much more of a morning person here in Cambodia than I am stateside, but having to actually get up and moving at 5:30 is something new. Having to dress up in a sampot and try to ride my mountain bike in that long skirt was something of a challenge. Of course as I rode along the main road towards school, I passed herds of students headed in the same direction, just waiting to witness the awkward barang trying to ride a bike. I arrived, parked my bike in what seemed like an appropriate place, and ran into one of the English teachers I had met earlier. I asked where I should be going, and he motioned me into the school director’s office. There, I was plopped into a plastic chair where I proceeded to sit for the better part of an hour while preparations were going on around me. The head English teacher found me there and explained that I should wait a bit longer because in just a short while, the students would all come sit down to listen to the Prime Minister’s address. “Oh.” I thought, “Ok, I guess the Prime Minister must give some sort of radio address to the school children of Cambodia on the first day of school.” After all, our high school is named after the prime minister, as are many of the high schools in Cambodia. And, if I’m not mistaken, the largest single part of Cambodia’s national budget goes to education. I started to get suspicious, though. Security guards and fancy cars started showing up. The frenzy to stop the microphone feedback heightened. I started to wonder...is the Prime Minister coming to our school? Maybe he visits one school each year, and it just happens to be this one? Peace Corps Volunteers past have many stories of being left out of the loop, but is this something I could have missed? Oh crap. I’m all wrinkly from my bike ride. I only took 15 minutes to write my speech. Oh CRAP!
As it turned out, the ‘Prime Minister’ who was addressing the students was not the Prime Minister at all, but the district governor. The ceremony involved me sitting in front of, oh, I guessed about 800 of my school’s 1400 students who all squatted obediently in the dirt in their school uniforms. I got a plastic chair up on the school office terrace, the makeshift stage for the day’s events, next to some of the school officials. Then we had to stand up to listen to the national anthem. Trust me, if you are the only barang for miles and you are standing in front of 800 Khmer school children and you are so much taller than all of the other teachers that you look like a giant, 800 Khmer school children will laugh at you. And you will have nothing to do but laugh at yourself too. After that, it won’t seem so bad that you have to give a 15-sentence speech in broken Khmer. At least all the students will listen to you, which they certainly won’t when the not-actually-the-Prime-Minister gives a speech lasting more than an hour.*
Afterwards, I did actually get to talk to some of the students, which was exciting. For one, it was exciting that they were actually brave enough to talk to me in English. As we all quickly learned during our practicum teaching week, this is no small feat for a Khmer student. Two, the 5-odd students I talked to could actually speak some English! I mean, a little. And they were 12th graders are probably some of the best students in the school, if I had to guess. But hey, it’s a start. I guess that’s where I come in...
*No I’m serious. More than an hour.
As it turned out, the ‘Prime Minister’ who was addressing the students was not the Prime Minister at all, but the district governor. The ceremony involved me sitting in front of, oh, I guessed about 800 of my school’s 1400 students who all squatted obediently in the dirt in their school uniforms. I got a plastic chair up on the school office terrace, the makeshift stage for the day’s events, next to some of the school officials. Then we had to stand up to listen to the national anthem. Trust me, if you are the only barang for miles and you are standing in front of 800 Khmer school children and you are so much taller than all of the other teachers that you look like a giant, 800 Khmer school children will laugh at you. And you will have nothing to do but laugh at yourself too. After that, it won’t seem so bad that you have to give a 15-sentence speech in broken Khmer. At least all the students will listen to you, which they certainly won’t when the not-actually-the-Prime-Minister gives a speech lasting more than an hour.*
Afterwards, I did actually get to talk to some of the students, which was exciting. For one, it was exciting that they were actually brave enough to talk to me in English. As we all quickly learned during our practicum teaching week, this is no small feat for a Khmer student. Two, the 5-odd students I talked to could actually speak some English! I mean, a little. And they were 12th graders are probably some of the best students in the school, if I had to guess. But hey, it’s a start. I guess that’s where I come in...
*No I’m serious. More than an hour.
Chamkar bai
First off, I’d like to say that I think everyone should have the experience of being an anomaly at least once in their lives. It is both a bit terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. Here, I am an anomaly without any effort on my part. It’s pretty hard to hide the fact that I’m, oh, about 8 feet tall and have glowing bright white hair. Also my nose. In America, people don’t talk about noses nearly enough. While I was in India, it was never one of the things that people noted about me (those things being that I was giant and fat and had light hair). In Cambodia, though, I am acutely aware of the fact that I have a drowmah srooit (pointy nose). According to all the ladies in my village, it is very sa-aht. Sa-aht can mean both ‘beautiful’ and ‘clean,’ so sometimes I like to pretend they’re impressed that I manage to keep my nose hair tidy.
Anyway, in our training village, I was one of 18 other barang to be stared at and gossiped about and yelled “Hello!” to. Here, I am one-of-a-kind. That makes me pretty popular. When I’m out by myself, I seem to only get staring so far. Mostly people have been too afraid to approach me. I’ve been going around with my host mom a lot, though, and that’s a different story. People have no problem at all approaching her to talk about me...while I’m standing right there. Usually the scene plays out something like this:
Woman 1 at the market/shop/coffee stand: Who is THAT?!?!?!
My mom: Oh, that’s my new daughter. She’s going to teach English at the high school.
Woman 1: Where is she from?
My mom: She’s from America. She’s working with an organization.
(At this point a crowd is usually starting to form)
Woman 2, 3, 4, 5: How old is she? Is she married? Can she eat rice? Where does she live? Does she like it here? Is she nice? Oh, she’s very fat. How much money does she make? Look at her pointy nose!
Since yesterday, the spiel has gotten even better. See, in Khmer, the word for cooked rice (bai) is different than the word for uncooked/growing rice. Also, the normal word for field (chamkar) is not the word used for a rice field. We were in a the middle of a field full of rice paddies, and I couldn’t remember what rice fields are actually called, so I called it a chamkar bai. My mom has now mentioned that to at least five different groups of people. For example, today we drove about 20 minutes down a dirt road to go offer food to monks at this wat in the in middle of nowhere. It was a very long process – giving money to various people, dividing up the cooked dishes, spooning small bits of rice into different bowls, lighting incense, offering things to the head monk, then (when the rest of the monks finally came) lots of chanting back and forth and bowing and so on. I was barely keeping up trying to just copy what my parents were doing. Anyway, somewhere during a break in the chanting, while we were watching the monks eat, someone starts asking about me. My mom launches right into the ‘chamkar bai’ bit. It gets a big laugh. Then we go back to some more chanting. It seems like I will probably never live that down, so my plan is to just embrace it, along with the rest of my anomaly identity. I’m just the crazy, giant, pointy-nosed, chamkar bai lady!
Anyway, in our training village, I was one of 18 other barang to be stared at and gossiped about and yelled “Hello!” to. Here, I am one-of-a-kind. That makes me pretty popular. When I’m out by myself, I seem to only get staring so far. Mostly people have been too afraid to approach me. I’ve been going around with my host mom a lot, though, and that’s a different story. People have no problem at all approaching her to talk about me...while I’m standing right there. Usually the scene plays out something like this:
Woman 1 at the market/shop/coffee stand: Who is THAT?!?!?!
My mom: Oh, that’s my new daughter. She’s going to teach English at the high school.
Woman 1: Where is she from?
My mom: She’s from America. She’s working with an organization.
(At this point a crowd is usually starting to form)
Woman 2, 3, 4, 5: How old is she? Is she married? Can she eat rice? Where does she live? Does she like it here? Is she nice? Oh, she’s very fat. How much money does she make? Look at her pointy nose!
Since yesterday, the spiel has gotten even better. See, in Khmer, the word for cooked rice (bai) is different than the word for uncooked/growing rice. Also, the normal word for field (chamkar) is not the word used for a rice field. We were in a the middle of a field full of rice paddies, and I couldn’t remember what rice fields are actually called, so I called it a chamkar bai. My mom has now mentioned that to at least five different groups of people. For example, today we drove about 20 minutes down a dirt road to go offer food to monks at this wat in the in middle of nowhere. It was a very long process – giving money to various people, dividing up the cooked dishes, spooning small bits of rice into different bowls, lighting incense, offering things to the head monk, then (when the rest of the monks finally came) lots of chanting back and forth and bowing and so on. I was barely keeping up trying to just copy what my parents were doing. Anyway, somewhere during a break in the chanting, while we were watching the monks eat, someone starts asking about me. My mom launches right into the ‘chamkar bai’ bit. It gets a big laugh. Then we go back to some more chanting. It seems like I will probably never live that down, so my plan is to just embrace it, along with the rest of my anomaly identity. I’m just the crazy, giant, pointy-nosed, chamkar bai lady!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
