Nirvana Is a Boiled Coconut

At a recent training for the new Cambodia PCVs, a monk described Buddhist theology.

Nirvana is like a boiled coconut, he said. If you take a regular coconut and stick it in the ground, it grows into a tree. If you leave a regular coconut sitting around, it rots. But if you boil a coconut, it neither grows into a coconut tree nor rots away. It simply stays the same forever. That is like nirvana.

Is that a selling point?

R.I.P. My Friend

This is the last picture ever taken of JoJo, I think sometime in November of 2007.

She died just before the Cambodian election, in July. I had left the house to buy some water and then got sucked into watching part of an election debate at a friend's restaurant. When I got home, I saw the neighborhood kids gathered on one of the bedframes that sits in front of a neighbor's house. They were looking at JoJo, who was lying on her side on the ground. They told me that she had been hit by a moto. She didn't look so bad; there was a little blood on her muzzle. But she was seizing slowly, as if trying to get air. Every few seconds she would draw her chin toward her chest, tensing all her muscles, and then relax again.

After this had gone on for a few minutes, she stopped moving.

I ran off to cry, vaguely wondering what is done with animal corpses here. Do they get buried? When I stopped crying, I went out by the garden in our backyard, which, I felt, would be a fine place to bury JoJo. It looked like my host grandpa (really my host mom's aunt's husband, who lives in the house behind ours) was making some preparations, getting ready to light some wood. Was it to be cremation then?

Alas, no. I think I was being willfully stupid while the preparations were going on, but when one of the neighborhood boys started filling an enormous pot with water, I finally had to ask. "What're you doing?" "Preparing JoJo. To eat," he said matter-of-factly.

And that was the fate of my beloved dog. All that evening, the scent of something I didn't want to think about wafted through the house. When dinnertime came, my family was tactful enough not to offer any of it to me: only the people at grandpa's house and some of my host brother's friends ended up eating it.

More recently, I mentioned to my family during Pchum Ben (the Cambodian ancestor holiday) that I missed JoJo. They decided that, since I didn't have any local ancestors to honor during the festival, I could throw my balls of rice to JoJo's spirit the next time we went to the pagoda. The thought of feeding her spirit was some consolation, but I still miss her. All I can say about that is, she was a good dog.

3rd and Six

This week I'm going to make my third trip to the Preah Vihear dipterocarp forest, to finish up the English classes Miyuki and I began last month (Miyuki braved the forest and the classes alone while I was out of commission). The teaching has been a really good experience, and although many of the hours surrounding the teaching were boring, I think I learned a lot and met some interesting people, both Khmer and foreign.

On the way to Preah Vihear the first time, we visited an ancient temple called Koh Ker (pronounced more like Kaw Kai) which I heard somewhere used to be a "rival capital" to Angkor Wat itself. It's in the middle of a large forested area, and the road conditions make the temple difficult to get to. It's a fairly run-down temple, and you have to wonder how many more centuries it can withstand before it becomes just another pile of rocks. Around the edges of the complex, a series of smaller pathways lead to shrines in various states of disrepair.



Some of the ancient Khmer writing on the shrine/temple walls is still fairly clear, despite the temple's degraded condition.



The pathways and small buildings follow each other back to the big temple of Koh Ker itself. Until recently, you could climb this temple, but it's probably not safe to do it anymore. In any event, the stairs are blocked off.



I can't imagine the temple in the dry season: without the greenery it probably seems very lonely.

So I have finally, finally, really seen one of the great Angkorian temples. Entrance cost $10, half of the Angkor Wat park entrance fee. I was certainly reluctant to release that crisp 10-dollar bill, but in the end I guess I don't miss it (too much).

Hooray for Antibiotics

I appear to be the proud owner of a brand-new dermal staphylococcus colony, which is mercifully retreating in the face of some hard-core antibiotics. How great is Science? So great!

And Sometimes, The Unexpected

Well, my most recent trip to the forest lasted just under 48 hours. I was so over Siem Reap (was preparing to kill the next driver who shouted "Lady, tuk-TUK!" at me) and ready to get back into the teaching groove, which had really been the highlight of the forest (students who cared! and paid attention! and looked forward to learning! it was crazy). Miyuki and I had bought a badminton set, and I bought a corny cross-stitch with two small people in a boat (I think--does it get clearer when you stitch it?), and we had replenished our book supply. We were going to kick boredom's ass.

And then I got this weird rash on my leg (pictures coming soon). And it's not like it was a big deal, except that when you're about 5 hours away from the nearest hospital (not to be snobby but a local government hospital doesn't count), medical issues get more important more quickly. If you know what I'm saying.

Truly, it looks like a small octopus had a fight with my inner thighs, and it's not clear who won. So I asked a doctor in Siem Reap about this thigh rash. He was Thai, so our communication wasn't great. At one point, I thought he said something about "Maybe it comes from sex?" And I very emphatically told him "No, definitely not from sex." The other PCV with me, Ms. Michael, burst out laughing. "Insects! Insects!" she said. Oh. Sheepishly, "Yeah, maybe it comes from insects." And then we all couldn't stop laughing. Because that's ridiculous! Or something.

Despite all this feel-good haha stuff, I still don't know what the heck is wrong. I'll post an update once I find out more. If you're not busy, please send some non-hypochondriac vibes my way. I think I'll need them.

The Forest

I am told that most of Southeast Asia used to be covered by a deciduous dipterocarp forest. This kind of forest is hard to imagine if you've never seen it. It's a very open forest, covered at the ground level by small shrubs and grasses (and water, in rainy season). If this were an airline, the trees in this forest would be flying first class because they've got all the room they can handle. It's an unusual (read: Weird!) kind of environment, one that takes a lot of getting used to. It can be beautiful, although capturing the beauty on film usually requires standing in one place long enough for something to bite you. This forest is home to some truly evil biting ants.



Anyhoo, my coteacher Miyuki and I spent a couple of weeks near a village in the forest, teaching English. Hard-core birdwatchers go up to this site to catch a glimpse of the giant ibis and white-shouldered ibis, two endangered bird species. We managed to tag along on a couple of these birding trips but honestly can't tell a parakeet from an ibis, especially as everything we saw was pretty far away. Miyuki later did her "sleeping ibis" impression for me.



Our job was to teach the local committee some basic English to help them interact with the bird-watchers. We had 4 hours of class every day, 2 hours for the committee



and 2 hours for teenagers from the village who are on school break and have more free time than they know what to do with. Everyone's favorite unit was when we had them play Bingo to practice numbers, although the unit that provoked the most hilarity was practicing "th" sounds for "this" and "that." Having students watch each other struggle (and sometimes fail) to get their tongue out between their teeth is not good for classroom decorum but excellent for morale.

Aside from teaching, Miyuki and I didn't have a lot else going on. We read through a whole box of books, played long games of Skip-Bo, and fantasized about food of all kinds. I also spent a good deal of time asking Miyuki stupid questions about Japanese culture, the answers to which I have now forgotten.

But that's OK, we'll have a chance to go through them all again, as we're going back to the village to teach for another couple of weeks. Woot?

Small-ish World

So I sit down this morning to check my email at the Sam Veasna Center. (I returned from the forest last week but am planning to go back again soon. Hot damn, is it good to have phone service!) And who sits down at the next computer but an IT guy to update the Center's computers. I field a call from a very persistent student wanting a letter of recommendation (after having ignored his 2 phone calls before 7:00 am this morning), and the IT guy overhears me mention my permanent site by name and when I'll eventually go back there. The IT guy then tells me he's from a village, Boeng Pring, about 10 km from my site. And he says his brother studies at my high school. And in the end, it turns out that his brother not only studies at my high school but is one of the better students from my English essay writing workshop, one I named Nicholas. Crazy!

I'm still trying to figure out if it's a small world or if Cambodia is just a small country.

P.S. Pictures of the forest are coming soon.