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!