A Fan of la Fin

May 1st was my last official day as a Peace Corps Volunteer. There was no trumpet fanfare, no ribbon-busting photo finish, no moment of enlightenment. I mostly just wandered around the Peace Corps office asking, "Are you sure I'm done? Really?"

This means I should probably take "Volunteer" off as a blog subheading, but I'm going to wait a while; the promised events did transpire, and I do have ongoing thoughts about Cambodia and my service that I want to share.

Not to worry: I'm not spending too much time processing it all. I've been working on my sunburn during my brief tour of Cambodia and Thailand. Malaysia's next!

Ta-ta Fauna

For the most part, I have gotten along pretty well with the little critters one has to live with on a day-to-day basis in Cambodia: the ants, the house lizards, the chickens, the mice, the mysterious flying insects, the bathroom spiders, the frogs, the bats, the birds. (This obviously excludes you, mosquitoes.) I've learned how to keep ants out of my room (by keeping no food whatsoever), as well as mice (ditto). I've gotten used to finding gecko and mouse droppings in unexpected places, and hearing the strange high-pitched cries of nocturnal animals that fly into my room in the dead of night. I've learned how to shoo chickens away from kitchen surfaces where people food is prepared ("Shhhhhh! Shhhhhhh!" you say to them). And so I believed we had come to an understanding.

Until recently. Recently I have been thinking that 2 particular members of the Cambodian domestic wildlife community have it in for me. The less egregious offender is the gecko. Geckoes are supposed to be friendly little creatures who eat bugs and look all tropical-country-iconic and shit. And for the most part they are. A few weeks ago, though, I brought some recently-washed-and-dried-on-the-line clothes into my room and hung them on a nail directly below my only light where the geckoes like to feast on little bugs. The next day I discovered that one anonymous gecko had had what we can call a severe gastrointestinal event all over one of my
shirts. Not just any shirt, but a teaching shirt.

(If I was a doctor and that gecko was in my care, I would have prescribed it a hefty dose of cipro. The poor little guy was obviously suffering.)

Normally this event would have been pretty annoying, because I hate laundry and all my efforts on this particular shirt would have to be repeated. But at that juncture it didn't bother me too much, because I was almost done with teaching, and who needs another teaching shirt over the vacation? Not me! At any rate, I tried (after an appropriate period of procrastination) to remedy the problem; but the shirt was irreversibly stained, and so it has gone into the rag pile.

The more egregious offender of the two is the tukai. Americans probably aren't familiar with these lizards, but they are all too well-known in Cambodia...or at least, their voices are. It's rare to actually see a tukai, because they're shy creatures despite living in close proximity to humans (as in, they live behind the poles supporting wooden houses--what the heck are those called?). As far as I can tell, they are about a foot long and nocturnal. The reason they're called tukais is that they make the strangest animal calls I have ever heard. It starts with a loud intake of (lizard) breath, which sounds like a fork being held against the edge of a fan blade: a quick, almost mechanical staccato. Then the lizard expels this breath in a series of 4 to 10 ear-splitting double clicks. It sounds like they're calling out "tukai," hence the name. My host mother has told me that a house where tukais cry a lot is a good house (I guess it's the same theory behind a house with a lot of plants?).

(This may be a tukai. Then again it may be some other kind of lizard.)

As long as I can remember, a tukai has lived basically 3 feet above the head of my bed. At one point, it actually fell from its usual perch and caught itself on my mosquito net. We had a stare-down, and then it wriggled its way back home.

I don't know if it's always been the same tukai, but I'm beginning to suspect that a new, more aggressive resident has pushed the old fella out. Why? Because ever since the end of cool season, my little cold-blooded friend has been doing his outsized tukai cry several times every night. I used to sleep through the night despite the traffic noises, dogs barking, early-morning (4 am) music from the pagoda, etc. So it's possible the old tukai cried and I never heard it. But the new one is a different story. I'm now awakened at least once a night by a piercing "Tukai! Tukai! Tukai! Tukai!" that sounds as if it's coming from about 3 inches behind my eyeballs.

I assume it is looking for mate, and if this is the case, it had better find one soon. Otherwise, I can't promise I'm not going to stick a broom handle behind that wooden post, get the tukai to latch onto it with its powerful jaws, and secretly set it free in an unsuspecting neighbor's house.

Happy New Year (again)

In the last 4 months, Cambodia has seen the births of 3 new years: international new year, lunar (Chinese) new year, and now Cambodian new year. Luckily, the best one was saved for last.

The Cambodian new year began at 1:36 am on April 14. The day before, Cambodian families prepared tables with fruit, incense and candle offerings. They put out plates of mangoes, bananas, lychees, and longans, added a bag of sand with decorative paper figures planted with sticks, and put up lights and other shiny decorations. The very devout (and the curious) got up in the middle of the night to light incense and watch the live TV broadcast of the gods accepting the people's offerings (though ours, despite this acceptance, were still on the table 3 days later).

(It looks even more festive if your hand slips while you're shooting.)

Khmer new year is a time of revelry and relaxation, characterized by small trips to mountains and lakes, the throwing of water balloons at motorists, and the generous powdering of people's faces (did I mention beer? I'll get to that). Luckily, the Cambodian zodiac closely mirrors the Chinese one, so we have just entered the year of the ox and everybody is now one year older than they were in early April. I think this means I'm supposed to tell people I'm 29 now even though I'm just shy of my 28th birthday.

My host family's house was a pretty central beer-drinking locale, collecting various neighbors, cousins, and even some local officials (since my host uncle is an official himself). The boys filled up an entire go-yu-an (open-bed "truck") with empty Black Panther cans. Sadly enough, I was not a big help in this endeavor; Black Panther upsets my tummy.

Our town used enough electricity every day so that the supply station was out before 9 o'clock every night. This made it mercifully hard to have karaoke parties in the late night and early morning, which made for the best sleep I've had all year. Thank you, Khmer new year, for your generous gift of slumber. I hope it will be a happy and prosperous year for Cambodia.

Dear Mangoes,

Thank you for existing.

Love,

c.b.

Dear China

In the name of all that is holy, I demand that you stop broadcasting CRI on the exact same short-wave frequencies that BBC and Radio Australia broadcast on. It would be only humane.

Thank you.

Pre-Pre-Pre-Farewell/Hello/What!? How Did It All Go By So Quickly?

February 2009 is about to roll into March 2009. It's hard to believe that I've been in Cambodia for over 2 years now. My Peace Corps service is about to come to a close, and I will no longer be a Volunteer as of May 1st.

My general plans, after that, are to travel for 6 weeks in Southeast Asia (sometimes with company and sometimes without) and then to go back to the US in June. After that I'll travel around the US to visit friends and family. Then in August I'll settle down to conquer some biology and chemistry pre-requisites in preparation for an academic career in biological anthropology (even though I still can't identify those organs in my morning bowl of noodles).

Going back to the US, we've been promised, is a big change, and not always easy. We're different from when we left, our country's different, our friends are different, our family's different. (When we left, the economic crisis was not even a glimmer in Lehman Brothers' eye; ol what's-his-name was still our president; nobody was watching Battlestar Galactica; and I thought stripes and florals didn't match.) Being Americans abroad is easy: we can just chalk up personal quirks to our upbringing in American culture. But being an American back home is a little more difficult: do we even remember how to do that?

So if you have any American culture/re-entry advice or observations, please don't hesitate to advise me or observe to me. I still check my e-mail weekly. And if you've been meaning to send snail mail in this direction, it's probably best to post it before St. Patrick's Day, or April Fool's Day at the latest. (April in Cambodia is a month of holidays, so the postal workers here may or may not be sorting the mail then.)

I'm going to continue posting on the blog, as several interesting events (knock on wood) should transpire between now and when I leave. But I think it will go by quickly and the strangeness and beauty of America will be mine to experience again before long.

Long-Promised AW Bike Race Report

Somehow, more than two months have passed since the Angkor Wat Bike Race. How did that happen? I looked up and all of a sudden we were on the far side of Valentine's Day, not to mention President's Day, New Year's, and Christmas. But I didn't forget that I promised a post about the race, so here's what I can tell you:

Looking back on the race, I consider it an unmitigated success because

(1) I got to spend a whole weekend in Siem Reap eating Western food and being decadent, aside from the pre-5 a.m. wake-up time for the race and the whole biking and sweating part

(2) Several contributors gave generously to the race (thank you all!)

(3) I rode the race in record time (1:13) for me compared to how long it normally takes to ride 28 km down the national highway to Battambang (1:20)

(4) As souvenirs of the race, I got a pretty green biking jersey which I wear all the time at site because it wicks and a delicious breakfast at Alliance Cafe

(5) As an added bonus, on this trip I got to visit Siem Reap's crocodile farm and throw fishes at the crocodiles in a not-entirely-successful attempt to get them to show their vicious natures (Would that we had had a camera!)

What more could I have wanted?

Here's a picture of me about to cross the finish line. Yes, I did the race in flip-flops. Tennis shoes are too heavy to put in my backpack for a weekend.

And here's a picture of Team Peace Corps after the sun came up and the race was over. We were down 2 members due to dengue and a forgotten helmet, but we made up for it by eating a lot of food at the post-race brunch.