Doin the Book Thing

My reading list here in Cambodia is pretty much restricted to the books I brought from the States, books I can manage to wrangle briefly from fellow Volunteers, books I can borrow from Peace Corps staff, and books sold by tourists who need cash to bookstores that sell them to desperate PCVs at the approximate price of one book per day's salary. You'd think, based on this availability, that I'd be reading a lot of romance novels (and I could, if I wanted to). But I've found, to my surprise, some real treasures, and I want to share.


A Summer Bird-Cage
Margaret Drabble

How did a women's college grad never read Margaret Drabble? A Summer Bird-Cage feels like The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood, only infinitely more readable. The stark, hollow choices faced by bourgeois female English college graduates in the early 1960s (marriage and therefore virtual retirement to one's own house or a drab tunnel of meaningless employment leading nowhere) are still relevant today in the West and in developing countries like Cambodia (I think of the choices my female students and even other female teachers face). This is the story of two sisters, both Oxford graduates. The older sister marries a strange but wealthy man, while the younger sister works at a tedious job and considers her future while waiting for her boyfriend who goes to live abroad for a year. The question is whether any appealing choices exist. The answer, well, you can guess....

A Thousand Acres
Jane Smiley

Rare is the friend of mine who has not heard me rave about Jane Smiley. A Thousand Acres is one of her best (surpassed only, perhaps, by The Greenlanders). This is the epic of a prosperous Iowa farming family in the 1970s attempting to determine the future of their farm. All of the players, working desperately to realize their vision of the future, are thwarted, intentionally or not, by those closest to them because of secrecy, greed, and betrayal. The characters are convincing because they are flawed, and Smiley is merciless in her treatment of them all. As things begin to go wrong, you hope that something, anything, will eventually go right. And this hope will be disappointed. It turns out, having all your hopes for the characters crushed is almost a relief, but one that leaves you a little stunned.

Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell

This book will change your life. Read it. Read it now. It's Orwell's story of the 1936-1937 Spanish Civil War from his own perspective as a reporter-turned-militiaman who is injured in the fighting. What strikes you is, well, everything. The revolutionary spirit in Barcelona, the labyrinth of Spanish and international politics, the privations at the front, the moral choices faced, sometimes courageously and sometimes cravenly, by people, parties, and countries. I walked around in a daze for an entire day after I finished it.

Twiddling My Thumbs

Soooo....I have now reached the phase of the school year called vacation. I'm trying to find some other projects to fill the summer. My best ideas, like doing English classes with the high school teachers and making the school library more student friendly, have been delayed for logistical reasons (the teachers are busy teaching private classes and the library is moving to a new space come October). So lately I've been hanging out at the wat and teaching English to the monks, spending a lot of time in the family hammock, and trying to recreate my American mom's limeade recipe (possibly the most ambitious event of my cooking career, as it involves 3 whole ingredients, 4 if you count the water and sugar used to make simple syrup as separate ingredients, as opposed to the usual 2 of pasta + sauce).

Any day now, I'm going to get a brilliant idea that will cause my days to be magically filled with tasks, duties, responsibilities, what have you. Until then, I'll be in the hammock.

Biking to the End of the Earth

A couple weeks ago I joined an excursion to visit one of the more remotely placed Volunteers. He lives perhaps 20 km from me down a dirt road. And when I say it mildly like that, it doesn't sound like a big deal. But this road is no ordinary dirt road. It is rocky, rutted, cratered, and muddy. The quickest way to travel this road (if you're Cambodian) is by moto, as there is a narrow, smooth track along the edge where one can travel quickly and relatively safely. Cars and trucks have it worse, as there are rarely 2 parallel tracks, which makes for a beating on their shocks and a really uncomfortable ride.

As motos are forbidden to Volunteers, the three of us (two staffers and me) rode our mountain bikes. It was a relatively cool day, overcast, with a breeze. It wasn't raining but had rained recently, which kept the dust down. Basically, we rode under ideal conditions. The 20-km ride took 2.5 hours.

This is one of the larger obstacles. The picture doesn't do it justice. Woe to any vehicle that falls into the center of this. But look at the beautiful trees on both sides of the road! We got to look at 20 km worth of them. Lucky us.


This bridge was taken out by large truck a few days before we passed through. We walked our bikes over a footbridge to continue our ride. Trucks had to take a detour to go over the stream.

But at the end of the road was a warm welcome, a really nice visit, and an adorable host sister, so it was all worth it.

The New Wat

A new wat has just been built near my town, and to celebrate its completion there was a community party. Everyone was invited: monks, parents, children, vendors, fortune tellers, anyone. Vendors sold food and incense, and kids clambered all over the carnival rides, even if they weren't operating at the time. It reminded me of a county fair. There was even corn on the cob!

The wat is beautiful with its brightly painted walls.

This is part of the fence that surrounds the wat. It's a shockingly bright pink. I love the carvings.

These doors lead into the wat. I'm sure that kid is trying to give the peace sign and not the British bird.

This is my neighbor, enjoying the rides. He should really talk to that other kid about proper peace sign-age.

Random Visuals

This is my sister Phea folding the petals of the lotuses she puts in the Buddhist shrines at our house every week. She taught me how to do it too. The word for pink in Khmer is "color of lotus flowers."

Yum, delicious Durian-flavored snacks. I bought these for my family since they love Durian fruit. However, the wafers didn't taste all that much like Durian and went stale quickly due to the humidity. Next time I get them some snacks, I think I'll try for chocolate-chip cookies.

What Does 105 Degrees Feel Like?

When your sweat rolls down your side, it feels like it's leaving a trail of burned skin. That's what 105 degrees feels like.

My Brush with Fame

The call came one June afternoon from my coteacher. "Come to school now."And then something garbled. Possibly the explanation of why I should go to the effort of putting on my teacher outfit and pedaling down to the high school in the stifling heat when I didn't have to be in class. Which is what, against my better judgment, I did.

The full explanation was easy to understand when not relayed by cell tower: a famous film star was coming to our school! To give us a library!

The first thought that crossed my mind was this: Cambodia + film star = Angelina Jolie. That equation, however, seemed far-fetched, so I decided that some young, scruffy, do-gooder actor was more likely. But I still secretly hoped for Angelina.

The Cambodian teachers crouched together under the shade of a small tree, sitting on benches or motos or their shoes. Waiting. A couple of the female teachers showed me the classroom prepared for the scheduled reception of the star. I tried hard to see it with my Western eyes, as the film star would see it, but my Khmer eyes wouldn't let me. Real flower bouquets? Where did they get those? (Trees in Cambodia are bursting with flowers but the kinds you see in houses and offices are usually silk or plastic.) Fans? The school owns fans? What may have looked like a standard reception to my American eyes 4 months ago was actually a grand welcome.

As the actress and her entourage made their way from their cars to the classroom, I scrutinized their faces in the hope of one of them triggering my memory. A woman walked by wearing a giant pair of sunglasses, and I thought "If that's Angelina Jolie, how do they make her lips look so big in the movies?" As it turned out, though, this lavish reception was set out for an Italian actress named Sabrina. I wondered if I had seen any of her films. (As it turns out, no.)

Once we were settled, the speeches began: speeches thanking all for their attention, money, presence, effort. And after this, we went back outside to talk to the assembled students.

I've done my internet research, and apparently this actress's name is Sabrina Ferilli. She does Italian-language movies exclusively and is married to a CEO of an Italian company. Through an NGO, they are providing funding to bring a library to our school: building, books, and all. It's pretty exciting for the school, as in my opinion the Khmer students need access to more books, especially Khmer-language books. Rumor is the library will be finished by next spring.

Sadly, I have no pictures of Sabrina. But I promise to post pictures of the library once it's built.