Over my 7 months of being a stranger in Cambodia, I've come to learn that introductions are just Not Done. The only reason I can think of that could explain this is that most people already know everybody else in their family, neighborhood, and workplace: if you live in the same village long enough, no one is a stranger. Kids grow up with neighbors and cousins, and have never not known their names and relationships. So when a complete stranger comes onto the scene, perhaps it doesn't occur to Cambodians to introduce her to the long-time inhabitants. I find myself struggling when a neighbor I've never seen before will emerge from our kitchen, knowing my name and asking how I am; I need to judge, based on gender and apparent age (note: ages are deceptive here), whether I should address them as "Uncle" or "Little Sister" or "Grandmother."
The one time I really had a chance to do a great job with an introduction was when I first met my Cambodian co-teacher while I was still in training. Back in my training village, when I noticed that Cambodians struggled to pronounce my name, I asked my training host family to give me a Khmer name. Since they called me "Lih" (the Z at the end being the sticking point), they gave me the Khmer name Malys (pronounced "ma-LIH"), which is also the name of a white flower. Unaware of the significance of the breathy H at the end, I introduced myself to my permanent-site co-teacher as Maly (pronounced "ma-LEE"), which has no special meaning but is a fairly common name (my co-teacher's wife is also named Maly). This version of my name is now set in stone in my permanent site. I don't know what lesson can be learned from this. Maybe I just need to accept that in Cambodia, it's more important that people call me "Big Sister" or "Teacher" than that they call me any particular name. And of course, if all else fails, they can just call me "Barang."
Monday, September 17, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
One Cool NGO
When Peace Corps arranged field trips to some of the NGOs around Phnom Penh as part of our training last week, I thought that we'd head to drab offices where the only thing we'd see in action would be a row of photocopiers. Yay for being wrong! My group headed to Pour un Sourire d'Enfant (PSE), which is French for "For the Smile of a Child" (or something). This NGO is basically awesome.
Here's the story: Phnom Penh has a dump. It's not like an American dump. Because Cambodia is a poor country, people already sort their trash and refrain from throwing away anything that could be of value. Anything recyclable (e.g., cardboard or plastics) has been sold to wholesale recyclables vendors (I'm not sure exactly how this works, but when the recyclables cart comes around my town with its squeaky horn, people rush out to buy or sell the scraps they have or need). A quick aside: most towns don't have any trash collection, so people who don't live in cities just burn their trash. At any rate, some families living near the Phnom Penh dump comb through the garbage to get at any neglected recyclables. The kids in these families don't usually get a chance to go to school, as they are helping their parents at the dump. PSE works with these families, giving younger children a meal every day.
This is the kitchen: below are the hand-washing stations.
Teenagers get an opportunity to go to school and get vocational training. The kids below are learning about hairstyling and makeup.
Where possible, the parents get involved as well: they are hired for jobs at the school, such as painting or making traditional crafts which are sold to support the organization. These activities give the parents a marketable skill that will hopefully allow them to provide for their families, which in theory means that the children should be able to go to a public school.
There are also a small functioning hotel and restaurant here for students to learn about working in the tourist industry. If you're ever in Phnom Penh and want to see an awesome NGO in action, consider staying for a night or two.
Here's the story: Phnom Penh has a dump. It's not like an American dump. Because Cambodia is a poor country, people already sort their trash and refrain from throwing away anything that could be of value. Anything recyclable (e.g., cardboard or plastics) has been sold to wholesale recyclables vendors (I'm not sure exactly how this works, but when the recyclables cart comes around my town with its squeaky horn, people rush out to buy or sell the scraps they have or need). A quick aside: most towns don't have any trash collection, so people who don't live in cities just burn their trash. At any rate, some families living near the Phnom Penh dump comb through the garbage to get at any neglected recyclables. The kids in these families don't usually get a chance to go to school, as they are helping their parents at the dump. PSE works with these families, giving younger children a meal every day.
This is the kitchen: below are the hand-washing stations.
Teenagers get an opportunity to go to school and get vocational training. The kids below are learning about hairstyling and makeup.
Where possible, the parents get involved as well: they are hired for jobs at the school, such as painting or making traditional crafts which are sold to support the organization. These activities give the parents a marketable skill that will hopefully allow them to provide for their families, which in theory means that the children should be able to go to a public school.
There are also a small functioning hotel and restaurant here for students to learn about working in the tourist industry. If you're ever in Phnom Penh and want to see an awesome NGO in action, consider staying for a night or two.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Sihanoukville = woot!
Hooray for vacation! I have finally managed to see something of Cambodia outside of my own town and Phnom Penh. And what a something it is!
Sihanoukville (Cambodians call it Kampong Saum) is a city in southern Cambodia known for its beautiful beaches. My concept of it came mostly from watching the weather report every night in my village with a pang of desire; the provinces show little variation in temperature from one another, with the notable exception of Sihanoukville, which is usually 3 to 10 degrees C cooler than everywhere else.
What can I say? What more do you need than white sand, green water, blue sky, and an ocean breeze? (Seriously, that last component is key.) A few companies operate snorkeling and beach-lying-around tours to small nearby islands out of those boats. There's no dock or pier, though, so you have to wade out to the boat, valuables on your head, and clamber aboard as the boat pitched in the waves. No ballerina, I nearly fell out of the boat immediately after making it up. I repeated the act 6 hours later while waiting for other people to disembark, so I basically felt awesome about myself. But it didn't matter! Because lying on the beach cures everything. The snorkeling itself was only OK, as the marine life wasn't particularly colorful. Also, the captain's warnings of cutting our feet on the coral that rose up near the surface of the water and the scary Darth Vader sound coming out of my breathing tube gave me some anxiety. The best part of the day was Koh Russei (pic below), a lightly populated island where we ate fresh seafood for lunch and played in the nearly deserted waves.
The other big highlight, for me at least, was the seemingly endless selection of Western food. Don't get me wrong, I love Khmer food. But being able to eat french fries on a deck chair on that beach....well, it took away all the stress of the summer: the stress of knowing that I didn't yet have any secondary projects in the works, the stress of traveling to Battambang and Phnom Penh for urgent errands.
Clearly, I left just in time. This place was obviously fixing to entrap me and keep me forever. I may succumb once my service is up. Anyone wanna join me...?
Sihanoukville (Cambodians call it Kampong Saum) is a city in southern Cambodia known for its beautiful beaches. My concept of it came mostly from watching the weather report every night in my village with a pang of desire; the provinces show little variation in temperature from one another, with the notable exception of Sihanoukville, which is usually 3 to 10 degrees C cooler than everywhere else.
What can I say? What more do you need than white sand, green water, blue sky, and an ocean breeze? (Seriously, that last component is key.) A few companies operate snorkeling and beach-lying-around tours to small nearby islands out of those boats. There's no dock or pier, though, so you have to wade out to the boat, valuables on your head, and clamber aboard as the boat pitched in the waves. No ballerina, I nearly fell out of the boat immediately after making it up. I repeated the act 6 hours later while waiting for other people to disembark, so I basically felt awesome about myself. But it didn't matter! Because lying on the beach cures everything. The snorkeling itself was only OK, as the marine life wasn't particularly colorful. Also, the captain's warnings of cutting our feet on the coral that rose up near the surface of the water and the scary Darth Vader sound coming out of my breathing tube gave me some anxiety. The best part of the day was Koh Russei (pic below), a lightly populated island where we ate fresh seafood for lunch and played in the nearly deserted waves.
The other big highlight, for me at least, was the seemingly endless selection of Western food. Don't get me wrong, I love Khmer food. But being able to eat french fries on a deck chair on that beach....well, it took away all the stress of the summer: the stress of knowing that I didn't yet have any secondary projects in the works, the stress of traveling to Battambang and Phnom Penh for urgent errands.
Clearly, I left just in time. This place was obviously fixing to entrap me and keep me forever. I may succumb once my service is up. Anyone wanna join me...?
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
The Friends
I've decided to put up pictures of my provincial buddies. These are the people who keep me sane when I'm frustrated; who when I visit welcome me and try to share some of their lives with me; who get me a car to Phnom Penh when I have dengue. I'm sure some Peace Corps regulation forbids publishing their names so I'll just say this: here we are lounging in an undisclosed luxurious location, preparing to drink some wine.
Here's the straggler, eating an ice cream sandwich (yes, that's ice cream in a baguette) during a visit to my house.
Here's the straggler, eating an ice cream sandwich (yes, that's ice cream in a baguette) during a visit to my house.
The Enemy
Tell the army to stand down: I have discovered the enemy, and it is not terrorism. It is not even fear. It is laundry.
Some Volunteers have developed a very zen attitutde towards laundry since their arrival in Cambodia, preferring to let it flow into the rhythms of their days and enjoying the quiet monotony of scrubbing and rinsing. I have resisted this calmness and continue to regard my laundry heap, when I cannot avoid looking at it, with an attitude of suspicion and dread. Perhaps this is due to my overwhelming incompetence at the task. Either I use too much soap and am unable to rinse it out properly, in which case my clothes dry crustily on the line. Or else I dry the clothes on the dirty part of the bamboo pole (as opposed to the elusive clean part of the bamboo pole), leaving streaks of dirt along the backs (although I have discovered that hangers do a great deal to alleviate this problem). Or else I wash on a day when it rains unpredictably, in which case nothing dries and everything (especially jeans) acquires a faint mildewy smell.
The process of doing laundry is nearly as old as the existence of cloth itself here. You fill your tub with soap (how much? I am never sure), clean-ish water, and your clothes. You crouch over the tub and scrub the armpits, collar, and hems of everything with a handheld brush until you are sure, sure, that they must be clean by now, right? After 5 minutes of vigorous scrubbing? And yet....is that brown sweat-and-dust spot on the back of the collar still there? Augh! Maybe no one will see it.... You give up and dump out the wash-water and vigorously rinse the clothes (twice) in fresh-ish water, and then you hang everything out to dry, like so, and hope uselessly that it won't rain that afternoon.
And I think it is safe to say that even those Volunteers who enjoy doing laundry still loathe washing towels. Towels are designed to be absorbent; but that means that they absorb every speck of dust and every grain of detergent in the wash-water. I am never sure which one wins out. Some people have stopped washing towels altogether, but I carry on, hoping, someday, to use such a large overabundance of soap as to overwhelm the other muck and come up with a gleaming white towel. I'll let you know how that goes....
Some Volunteers have developed a very zen attitutde towards laundry since their arrival in Cambodia, preferring to let it flow into the rhythms of their days and enjoying the quiet monotony of scrubbing and rinsing. I have resisted this calmness and continue to regard my laundry heap, when I cannot avoid looking at it, with an attitude of suspicion and dread. Perhaps this is due to my overwhelming incompetence at the task. Either I use too much soap and am unable to rinse it out properly, in which case my clothes dry crustily on the line. Or else I dry the clothes on the dirty part of the bamboo pole (as opposed to the elusive clean part of the bamboo pole), leaving streaks of dirt along the backs (although I have discovered that hangers do a great deal to alleviate this problem). Or else I wash on a day when it rains unpredictably, in which case nothing dries and everything (especially jeans) acquires a faint mildewy smell.
The process of doing laundry is nearly as old as the existence of cloth itself here. You fill your tub with soap (how much? I am never sure), clean-ish water, and your clothes. You crouch over the tub and scrub the armpits, collar, and hems of everything with a handheld brush until you are sure, sure, that they must be clean by now, right? After 5 minutes of vigorous scrubbing? And yet....is that brown sweat-and-dust spot on the back of the collar still there? Augh! Maybe no one will see it.... You give up and dump out the wash-water and vigorously rinse the clothes (twice) in fresh-ish water, and then you hang everything out to dry, like so, and hope uselessly that it won't rain that afternoon.
And I think it is safe to say that even those Volunteers who enjoy doing laundry still loathe washing towels. Towels are designed to be absorbent; but that means that they absorb every speck of dust and every grain of detergent in the wash-water. I am never sure which one wins out. Some people have stopped washing towels altogether, but I carry on, hoping, someday, to use such a large overabundance of soap as to overwhelm the other muck and come up with a gleaming white towel. I'll let you know how that goes....
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Actually, You Do Hafta Go Home
Due to my remarkably fever-free state the last few days, I'm being sent home. Things I will miss about my stay in Phnom Penh: air conditioning, internet access, a refrigerator, and Scrubs (yes, they have Scrubs here! And My Name Is Earl!).
Things I won't miss: the same damn story on CNN 15,000 times every day. The commercial for Seoul, South Korea, whose audio goes a little something like this: "Seoul. Renew your soul. Seoul. Soul of Asia." (Read it out loud to realize how annoying it is.) In fact, I never want to hear either the word "soul" or the word "Seoul" ever again. I will also not miss any of the coverage of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Guess what year it is people? 2007. That's right. The damn Olympics are a FULL YEAR AWAY. Until they begin, do not mention their existence. Nobody cares. People in Beijing are sick of your cameras. The pollution in Beijing is sick of your cameras. Just leave it alone. The last thing I won't miss about Phnom Penh is, when I first step my big toe out of the apartment building, every moto driver in a 5-k radius shouts out "Lady! Motodop?" The moto drivers in my hometown have learned from my constant annoyed refusals that their persistence will never, ever in a million years pay off. There is no time to teach all the moto drivers in Phnom Penh that Peace Corps Volunteers can't ride motos, so my beleaguered-sounding "No!" must be employed every. Single. Time.
Ah well. At least the dengue's gone.
Things I won't miss: the same damn story on CNN 15,000 times every day. The commercial for Seoul, South Korea, whose audio goes a little something like this: "Seoul. Renew your soul. Seoul. Soul of Asia." (Read it out loud to realize how annoying it is.) In fact, I never want to hear either the word "soul" or the word "Seoul" ever again. I will also not miss any of the coverage of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Guess what year it is people? 2007. That's right. The damn Olympics are a FULL YEAR AWAY. Until they begin, do not mention their existence. Nobody cares. People in Beijing are sick of your cameras. The pollution in Beijing is sick of your cameras. Just leave it alone. The last thing I won't miss about Phnom Penh is, when I first step my big toe out of the apartment building, every moto driver in a 5-k radius shouts out "Lady! Motodop?" The moto drivers in my hometown have learned from my constant annoyed refusals that their persistence will never, ever in a million years pay off. There is no time to teach all the moto drivers in Phnom Penh that Peace Corps Volunteers can't ride motos, so my beleaguered-sounding "No!" must be employed every. Single. Time.
Ah well. At least the dengue's gone.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
D-*-N-G-U-* F-*-V-*-R
OK kids, time to buy a vowel. May I recommend the "E"? That's right, I've got a tropical disease to call my very own. Sweet, sweet dengue fever.
When I first came down with a headache last week, I attributed it to heat exhaustion, which I've already had once here in Cambodia (that's a whole other fun story). So I did what you're supposed to do for heat exhaustion, which is drink enough water to drown a horse. But later that night, as I shivered in my bed while wearing my muu-muu, 2 sarongs, a t-shirt, and a long-sleeved shirt in 78-degree weather, I began to suspect that heat exhaustion was not the culprit.
Despite my pounding head, aching body, queasy stomach, and high fever, I climbed into a car bound for Phnom Penh the next day. The doctors did some blood testing, even though it's nearly impossible to tell anything by Day 2 of a fever, especially as malaria, typhoid, and dengue look very similar. What we did figure out was that I didn't have malaria, which is alleged to be even worse than dengue (how anything could be worse, I shudder to imagine).
This situation has continued for the past six days. The only new development was a stomach that bucked and promised to relieve itself of its contents at the sight, smell, or mention of food. Only yesterday were the doctors able to confirm that I do, indeed, have dengue.
All this medical turmoil means I have gotten to have some new experiences: I'd never been hooked up to an IV before, and now I've been stuck to two! Also, I'd never had an ultrasound before, but they decided to test me for an enlarged spleen and liver (?), so now I know what pregnant women the world over go through (and damn, is that gel cold).
Now I'm in the "full-body rash" part of the disease. Which everyone assures me means that I'm on the road to recovery. It had better, because I can suffer no more indignities. The Peace Corps doctor is constantly demanding urine samples and threatening to MedEvac me to Bangkok if I don't eat more. The worst part is that my Khmer friends keep texting me and asking if I've eaten rice porridge yet, as they seem to think this will be very helpful. Even on good days, rice porridge isn't all that appealing. But when your fever's running at a good 102, the last thing you want to put in your stomach is hot rice soup. I have to delete these messages right away, lest the idea of the rice porridge causes my stomach to revolt.
So here's my hard-earned advice, and it shouldn't be too hard to follow if you live in the US (except the South): don't get dengue. It's a miserable, horrible disease. I can't imagine how rural Cambodian children survive this without air conditioning and the relatively modern medical care available in Phnom Penh (there are no hospitals up to Western standard here but there are some Western-standard clinics). I know many Cambodian children suffer through it at home and go to local clinics only to get an IV when their symptoms get very bad.
There is a serious dengue epidemic throughout Southeast Asia this year, in Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia. Because dengue mosquitoes are day biters, mosquito nets are of no use in fighting the disease. No vaccine has been developed yet. Dengue is here, and it's hard to avoid.
LEST THIS DISCOURAGE ANYONE FROM VISITING ME, however, let me remind you that I was here for 6 months before contracting it. And if you visit in the dry season (November to April), there aren't as many mosquitoes and your chances of catching anything go down. Also, the good news is, dengue doesn't kill you. I'm sitting here typing, and all it took was 6 days of my best blanket impression.
When I first came down with a headache last week, I attributed it to heat exhaustion, which I've already had once here in Cambodia (that's a whole other fun story). So I did what you're supposed to do for heat exhaustion, which is drink enough water to drown a horse. But later that night, as I shivered in my bed while wearing my muu-muu, 2 sarongs, a t-shirt, and a long-sleeved shirt in 78-degree weather, I began to suspect that heat exhaustion was not the culprit.
Despite my pounding head, aching body, queasy stomach, and high fever, I climbed into a car bound for Phnom Penh the next day. The doctors did some blood testing, even though it's nearly impossible to tell anything by Day 2 of a fever, especially as malaria, typhoid, and dengue look very similar. What we did figure out was that I didn't have malaria, which is alleged to be even worse than dengue (how anything could be worse, I shudder to imagine).
This situation has continued for the past six days. The only new development was a stomach that bucked and promised to relieve itself of its contents at the sight, smell, or mention of food. Only yesterday were the doctors able to confirm that I do, indeed, have dengue.
All this medical turmoil means I have gotten to have some new experiences: I'd never been hooked up to an IV before, and now I've been stuck to two! Also, I'd never had an ultrasound before, but they decided to test me for an enlarged spleen and liver (?), so now I know what pregnant women the world over go through (and damn, is that gel cold).
Now I'm in the "full-body rash" part of the disease. Which everyone assures me means that I'm on the road to recovery. It had better, because I can suffer no more indignities. The Peace Corps doctor is constantly demanding urine samples and threatening to MedEvac me to Bangkok if I don't eat more. The worst part is that my Khmer friends keep texting me and asking if I've eaten rice porridge yet, as they seem to think this will be very helpful. Even on good days, rice porridge isn't all that appealing. But when your fever's running at a good 102, the last thing you want to put in your stomach is hot rice soup. I have to delete these messages right away, lest the idea of the rice porridge causes my stomach to revolt.
So here's my hard-earned advice, and it shouldn't be too hard to follow if you live in the US (except the South): don't get dengue. It's a miserable, horrible disease. I can't imagine how rural Cambodian children survive this without air conditioning and the relatively modern medical care available in Phnom Penh (there are no hospitals up to Western standard here but there are some Western-standard clinics). I know many Cambodian children suffer through it at home and go to local clinics only to get an IV when their symptoms get very bad.
There is a serious dengue epidemic throughout Southeast Asia this year, in Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia. Because dengue mosquitoes are day biters, mosquito nets are of no use in fighting the disease. No vaccine has been developed yet. Dengue is here, and it's hard to avoid.
LEST THIS DISCOURAGE ANYONE FROM VISITING ME, however, let me remind you that I was here for 6 months before contracting it. And if you visit in the dry season (November to April), there aren't as many mosquitoes and your chances of catching anything go down. Also, the good news is, dengue doesn't kill you. I'm sitting here typing, and all it took was 6 days of my best blanket impression.
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