A bowl of dessert

After being awake since 6am, reading and putzing around, eating my banana-and-peanut-butter breakfast in my princess tent, I finally ventured out of my mosquito net at 8:20am, grudgingly even though I had most of the morning off. This gave me about 25 minutes to dump cold water on my head and pull on a sampot before hopping on my bike and down to school.

I took up my usual place at the female teacher’s table under the big tree, saying hello to some of my coworkers. I looked through the lesson I thought we’d probably be teaching (I’ve given up trying to pin down things in advance) while they gossiped in Khmer. About 5 minutes before class was to start, I realized I hadn’t seen my co-teacher come out of the class where he should have been teaching the first hour. I ventured around to see if he was running late. A group of students approached: “Cher, uht kehrn crew Chart dtee.” Teacher, we haven’t seen Mr. Chart. Ah, so my co-teacher is sick, or at least absent. I should be disappointed, I know. This means of the 9 hours I should have taught yesterday and today, all of them are cancelled. A lot of those hours were for one teacher’s vacation, but also two for a school soccer game, then this. It’s not unusual. We’ve only been in school two months so far, but I haven’t yet had to work a whole week with all of my classes as scheduled. Rain, holidays, soccer, funerals, general unexcused teacher absences...well, there are a lot of reasons not to come to school.

So I didn’t actually do any of my real job for two days. But, as they liked to remind us during training, Peace Corps is a 24-hour gig. The most important thing I did today was eat some dessert. I went to the market on the thin pretense of buying a scrub brush for my laundry, knowing that if I wasn’t teaching, the best thing I could do with my time was just to hang out and chat. Usually the market affords ample opportunity to do that. Even though I knew roughly what section would have what I was “looking for,” I stopped and asked a few of the market ladies I’d previously chatted with where I could buy a clothes brush. As I made my way inside, one of my grade 11 students overheard and offered to take me to the stall herself. My scrub brush safely in my bag, she asked if I wanted to eat dessert. Now, it’s only 10:30 in the morning, but I’m never one to turn down some dessert if it’s part of my noble Peace Corps mission to reach out to the youth of this community.

I think we’re going to get some kind of nom, the ubiquitous Khmer word for practically any type of junk/snack food. Instead, she leads me to a stall just next to the meat section of the market. She pulls out a stool for me, and I sit with my back to some slabs of pork fat and a pig head laid out on a picnic tablecloth. I try to block out the smell of meat as she dishes me up a bowl of what turns out to be my favorite bong aim, shaved ice and chunks of chewy morsels covered in condensed milk and syrup. Even though she’s not one of the students I recognize as being a good English student in her class, I start asking her some of my stock questions to help her practice speaking a little. To my surprise, she’s anxious to speak English (the majority of students are too shy to answer even my simple questions) and blows me away with her complex answers. She has been holding back on me in class. I move beyond my basic “What time do you usually eat lunch?” and “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” to ask her about her family and the dessert stall they have at the market. Her parents make the sweets themselves early in the morning in their village, about one kilometer down the dirt road nearby. She helps them sell the desserts when she’s not busy with class, she tells me as she washes some bowls and uses a plastic bag tied to a stick to swat away some flies.

Soon enough the meat vendors at my back start asking her questions about me (in Khmer). Some of the women who are up on their gossip start to answer for me before I chime in and everyone realizes, excitedly, that I can understand them. I now have the rapt attention of all the shoppers and vendors within my field of vision as I answer their questions about my family, my salary, my marital status – the usual. I chat with them, and alternately in English with my student, for about 20 minutes before I need to be heading home to lunch. As I get out my wallet, my student motions to me to put it away. “I give you free teacher.” I hand her what I know is the usual cost for a bowl of bong aim and tell her thanks but I want to be able to come back and eat her dessert again. She gives me back 500 riel of the 1500 (about 37 cents) I gave her, shaking her head. “Thank you so much teacher.” I ask her why she is thanking me. “I’m so happy. I feel happy to talk with you teacher.”

As I walk home, I think to myself...it’s a good thing class was cancelled.