On Karaoke (twice!), and Christmas in Cambodia

Dear friends and family,

It has been three weeks since I have had the time to sit down and write a new blog post, and what an eventful three weeks it has been! I have been traveling into town a lot for various reasons and am really enjoying this weekend at home in Mesang to relax. Mid-December there was the annual MCC planning staff meeting, which was actually not as bad as it sounds. It lasted for 2 days, but in the afternoons we did fun activities together. The first day we went bowling in a nearly deserted mall. It was a rather strange place, but we had tons of fun. The second day we rented a karaoke room and went out for pizza as a goodbye party for a couple that are returning to the States after 3 years in Cambodia. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling that well, so didn’t really enjoy either the karaoke or the pizza, though I am not so sure how much I would have enjoyed the Karaoke even on a good day. After 4 months of living in Cambodia illness free, I managed to catch a cold. For three days I had a fever, headache, sore throat, and generally felt terrible; and then it went away. I know that apparently we are in the cool season now, and therefore everyone is catching colds. I somehow thought I was immune to the cold going around because it just seemed impossible to me to catch a cold when it is still 30 degrees out. But it is possible! I am glad I was feeling better by Sunday because I took the most crowded bus back to Prey Veng with a couple of other MCCers. The 14 passenger van had at least 25 people; and all their stuff. We, being foreigners, were given the front row of seats behind the driver, closest to the “ac” and music video player (If the AC was working, I certainly couldn’t tell). However, in between this row of seats and the driver’s seat was a bench. We were told this bench was for 3 kids. We said that was OK. Turns out what they meant was 4 kids, their mother, and the wife of the driver (who is not a small woman)! We literally could not move at all the whole trip.

The following week I went into the city again for MCC’s Christmas party. A lot of Cambodian staff came and brought their families along. It was a lot of fun- but very different than at home. It somehow lacked the feeling of excitement and anticipation that you feel at a Christmas party at home. Maybe it was the hot weather, the non-Christmasy (albeit delicious) food, or that there were so many people there not used to celebrating Christmas the way we do at home. Nevertheless, I am glad I went. I helped with games, and I think my bowling with elephant apples game was a hit (After eating a couple and giving some away, I wasn’t really sure what else to do with the giant bag of elephant apples my host mother sent along with me!) I think the best part of my weekend was spending the day on Saturday with Galuh (another one-year volunteer like myself) from Indonesia. We went shopping together, ate at an Indonesian restaurant, went to the market, ate ice cream, and in the evening watched a couple movies and ate all of the snacks we had bought earlier that day (seaweed, chocolate covered wafers, a giant candy cane,  mangoes, and oranges. Yum!)

The day after I got back to Mesang was Christmas Eve. I spent the day with ODOV staff on an exposure visit to a nearby province. I got a call at 6:30 AM saying that we were supposed to leave at 6 and they were waiting for me. I am certain no one told me when we were leaving. When I got to the office at 6:45, there were several people still not there. Apparently they were under the impression that we weren’t leaving until 7! We traveled for 2 ½ hours by bus (I swear they chose the worst roads possible) and ended up in a town a stone’s throw away from the border of Vietnam. I’m not really sure what we learned about in the morning because I couldn’t understand it, but in the afternoon we visited a pig raising farm, and learned all about pig raising. This I was able to understand thanks to the visuals and some helpful translation! I even felt a bit useful since I was the only one who remembered to bring a camera, and was therefore responsible for documenting the trip. Since it was near dark by the time our tour was done, we decided to stay in town a bit longer. Lucky me got to experience karaoke in Cambodia for a second time in one month! This time I (sadly) didn’t know any of the songs as they were all in Khmer, but had a fabulous time watching everyone else. The guys were all the first ones up to start dancing along to the music and really got into it. I even got dragged up to dance for one song, despite my insistence that I didn’t know how to dance Cambodian style. It was an interesting and fun day, and I am so glad that I was able to join the trip.

Though I had a fun day, the long ride home that evening in the dark was lonely. I closed my eyes and pictured snow gently falling; my family walking back up the driveway to my grandparent’s house after going to the Christmas Eve service at church; lights on the trees shining through the darkness; hot chocolate and Christmas cookies waiting in the cosy indoors. And then I opened my eyes, remembered it was 30 degrees, absolutely dark on the road other than our headlights, that I was on the other side of the world from my family, and that I was the only person in the van who knew or cared that it was Christmas Eve. But when I woke up the next morning, I picked up my Bible from where I had left off in the book of Isaiah, and was immediately filled with a sense of joy and peace. I was nearly at the end of Isaiah, having started to read it a while before. What a great book to read around Christmas time, for it is a book of promise. How perfect on Christmas morning to read the words of Isaiah 53- the words of promise that Jesus fulfilled when he came to earth.

Christmas morning I was able to skype home and talk with my family on their Christmas eve. I then went to a Christmas celebration in Prey Veng town at the home of some MCCers. Present were some of their visiting friends and family, Peace Corps volunteers, and Cambodian friends who know or work with MCCers. We ate delicious food; there was fresh homemade bread, butter, cheesy potatoes, salad, delicious chicken, and a Cambodian pumpkin custard dessert. I lead some of the visitors on a trip to Monkey Island, where the monkeys were exceptionally active! I enjoyed lots of great conversation with some great new people. And in the evening I got to talk to more friends and family on skype. All in all it was a wonderful day! I even got to open a little present that was sitting under the little tree for me. Christmas in Cambodia was not the same as at home, but it was still Christmas- still a time of joy, of peace, of getting together and enjoying one-another’s company.

And now I am back in Mesang. I was busy planting carrots and radishes and garlic in the garden, and helping out with a grant proposal this week. With nothing to do all weekend, I am ready to relax, enjoy the cool breeze, sleep in the hammock, and maybe finish a book or two. I hope you all had a joyous Christmas and I wish you all a very happy new year!

Blessings,

Rebecca

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has appointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the broken-hearted and to announce that the captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favour has come.” Isaiah 61:1-2.

As requested by someone very special- monkeys on monkey island in Prey Veng. I love going there to watch them run around! Thankfully this one was sitting still enough for a photo!

Fascinated by something in her hand!

Since I knew I could not find Christmas lights in Mesang, and it was the first advent, I decided to make my own "lights". When the morning sun is shining through, they almost seem to glow!

 

On discovering gravity, digging in the dirt, and decking the halls

Dear friends and family,

Elephant apples are in season... I fear for my life. Imagine if you will, a grapefruit sized fruit, as dense as a baseball, suspended 20, 30, 40 feet up in the air. When ripe, they crash to the ground with a marvelous thud. It is a good thing Isaac Newton wasn’t sitting under one of THOSE trees on that legendary day. Despite the perilous nature of the trees, the fruit is a favourite in Cambodian households. To open the elephant apple and get to the fruit inside, one must repeatedly smash it against the floor with great force. Or, I suppose you could drop it from a really tall tree. The inside is a pulpy mass of fruit and seeds. When not ripe, it is sliced thin and dipped in salt with chilli pepper. The fruit is so dry that it makes your whole mouth pucker with just one bite. When ripe, it turns into a sweet dark brown mush that can be eaten with a spoon. I must admit it took me a while to get used to eating this fruit, and I was just starting to like the unripe version and now suddenly it is the season for ripe elephant apple.

This week was very exciting at ODOV. We finally got our hands on some seeds and started planting! I have a whole plot at the back of the farm for research. We planted garlic, shallot, and potato from vegetables purchased at the local market. The purpose of this experiment is to see if they will actually take and grow successfully. We also planted some tomatoes in a nursery bed for transplantation to the research plot later this month. This is a variety trial, to see which variety of tomato grows best/tastes best/gives the best yield of tomatoes (assuming they grow at all). The only problem is one of the packages is in Chinese, and another variety came in a clear plastic bag, so we don’t actually know what the varieties are. We also hope to save some tomato seeds, which may not be feasible if the varieties in question are hybrid. Unfortunately, since we can’t read the packages, we won’t know until we try! We also planted some ginger in a shadier region in the front of the office.  This crop could make a nice profit from selling to the market if it grows well.

I had a great time out in the garden helping to plant these vegetables. I work closely with the gardeners; learning together. They have been very helpful teaching me how to do things in the garden, and I have been able to give some tips on growing these new vegetables, and focusing our efforts into a more controlled experiment. I have also been spending more of my spare time recently just helping out with other areas of the garden that are not research related. Who wouldn’t rather dig in the dirt and weed cabbage beds than help write grant proposals and reports? It took me a while to discover that no one at ODOV was going to invite me out to do things in the garden, or volunteer to show me how. I eventually realized that if I wanted to be out in the garden more, I just had to go out, watch what they were doing, and start helping. Now that the ice is broken, the gardeners feel more at ease talking to me, and knowing my eagerness to learn, are quicker to teach me new things. I hope some of our vegetables grow!

Life in Mesang is going well. Even though it doesn’t FEEL like the Christmas season, I have been celebrating in tiny ways; listening to Christmas music (of course), listening to Vinyl Café Christmas concerts on podcast, decorating my room, and attending a Christmas celebration at a church in Mesang. Last week I discovered with dismay that when I got a new notebook laptop for Cambodia, I accidentally forgot to copy most of my Christmas music onto it! Thankfully, I have mobile internet on my laptop, and can stream Christmas music live from music stations at home, even when there is no electricity here! Technology is great for some things! However, technology failed me when it came to Christmas lights. What is Christmas without Christmas lights? Realizing that I would never find lights in this town, and since there frequently is no power anyway, I decided to make my own lights out of coloured ink pencils, paper, and string. The result is very fine indeed! I used the same materials to decorate the miniature Christmas tree given to me by some other MCC workers. You can see a picture of my village’s only Christmas tree below!

As for the Christmas celebration I alluded to above; I wasn’t sure what to expect, but what I found definitely wasn’t it! To me, the affair looked more like a Cambodian wedding rather than a Christmas celebration, were it not for the fact that there was a flannel graph nativity scene (with a mysterious cloud of smoke randomly inserted into the scene and with a book floating in the sky), and Christmas music. And even the Christmas music sounded like Cambodian dance music, but I was able to catch the occasional word “Noel” and “Jesus”. But it wouldn’t be a Cambodian party without loud music blaring from no less than 12 speakers (I counted)! I guess I couldn’t expect Christmas in Cambodia to be the same as at home. We should embrace differences, right? All-in-all it was a wonderful experience, a great time of fellowship, and a chance to meet new people. I am very glad I braved the long road and went. In a way, I was very glad they did not try to imitate a traditional “western” Christmas. Part of what makes Christmas at home so special is the traditions that come along with it; the sense of anticipation, familiarity, peace, and fellowship that comes when we gather together and spend time with family and friends. Being in Cambodia over the Christmas season is really helping me to appreciate the aspects of Christmas that NEVER change; God’s love, Jesus’ sacrifice, our salvation, and our hope.

May you be filled with a peace that passes understanding!

Yours truly,

Rebecca

Elephant apple... the unripe kind.

"O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree..."

On 101 uses for the kroma, barang-barang!, and a surprize encounter on the mountain top

Dear family and friends,

As many of you know, I have been on vacation for the past week and a half in the province of Kampong Som by the sea, during the water festival holiday. This brought on many exciting adventures and experiences that I won’t too soon forget. To give you a brief idea of my itinerary, I left Prey Veng on November 21^st, spent a couple of days in the city where I “helped work on ODOV’s website”, which basically involved me approaching Humberto (MCC’s go-to-guy for all things smart and computer-y) and saying “HELP!” I then took a long bus ride down to Sihanoukville, Cambodia’s tourist beach town. There I stayed with Galuh, another SALT volunteer, and her host family. The next day, Galuh and I went to Koh Rong, an island nearby with a few beach resorts. By resort I mean one-room bungalows with beds and bug nets, shared bathrooms, a restaurant with really good and inexpensive food, and all the beach gloriously uncrowded beach you could want! We stayed there for a couple of days and met up with some other MCC’ers who happened to be vacationing at the same time. Back in Sihanoukville I took a day trip to Ream National Park, known for its birding. More about that later. The next day I visited Galuh at her workplace, the Cambodian Children’s Paining Project, before sharing a taxi with some OTHER MCCers heading the Kampot, which was my next destination. In Kampot I stayed at a little riverside guesthouse on the river where I enjoyed lovely live Argentinian music and met some very interesting people, visited some caves with the above mentioned MCCers also on vacation, took a day trip to Bokor National Park, and then went home!

I became convinced on this trip that my Kroma is the most useful piece of clothing I own. Here is a list of things I used it for this past week alone: pillow on the boat ride to Koh Rong, stylish beach wrap, wrapped it around my head like a hat during the walk through Ream National Park, sweat rag to wipe my face during our intense caving experience (more about that later as well), catching tiny striped fish on the beach with Galuh, towel for showering, I even slept in it once when it was too hot to put on clothes, blanket for sitting on, scarf to keep warm in the cool misty mountain air of Bokor, scarf to protect me from the sun on the long moto ride from Prey Veng to Mesang,  and finally as a handkerchief to carry some pounded rice from where my host mother brought me to watch it being made to our house. From now on, I shall never go anywhere without it.

Besides discovering 101 useful ways to use a kroma, I also discovered a lot about Cambodia on this trip. First of all, I discovered that it is a totally different world there on the coast. Never have I seen so many Barangs in one place! What is a Barang, you ask? Barang is the Cambodian work for foreigner. It was explained to me that originally the word was Barangsay, the closest you can come to saying Français in a language that has no “f” sound; Français because it was the French that colonized Cambodia way back when. This was gradually shortened to Barang and now refers to any foreigner. It was so strange for me to be on a bus full of barangs, to stay in guesthouses and eat in restaurants that catered only to Barangs, to meet people from all over the world, to not be stared at because there I was not special anymore, to have so many people try to rip me off just because I am a foreigner. That last part wasn’t so fun. I know it is to be expected when visiting such a touristy place, but it still feels terrible. They even have kids doing it, especially kids. When we went to visit the caves the first one was amazing! We had no idea what to expect… the guidebook just said caves with an ancient temple inside. The first set of caves we had to pay admission and for somebody to watch our motos (no matter how many time we said they will be fine). But in return, we got a spectacular tour, perhaps more than we bargained for at times… we were lead on a caving expedition through the mountain, squeezing through narrow passages, scrambling up slippery rocks, dodging killer bats, finishing with a 2m drop from a ledge and crawling along a rotting plank over a deep murky underground pool. But it was absolutely stunning! The caves were of limestone, beautifully carved by time. In some places, you could glimpse sunlight high above, and had to step around roots that hung from the ceiling, and watch that you didn’t crush the flowers and fungi growing in the cool dampness. At home, you would have had to sign a thousand waivers, wear a helmet, been warned to wear something other than flipflops on your feet, been given a headlamp (we had 1 flashlight between the 5 of us). But as Helen Keller said “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing!” The second set of caves just up the road was interesting as it had an ancient Hindu temple inside, well preserved over the last 1300 years thanks to the shelter of the protecting cave. However, we were totally scammed by the local kids, knew it was happening, but couldn’t do anything about it.

As we were trying to find the place, some kids offered to be our guides. When we said no, they told us the caves were up ahead. Eventually we realized that we were heading the wrong way and turned back, only to find the kids again who insisted they guide us. Turns out we had been right beside the caves the first time. They made us pay for guides, pay to enter the cave, and pay for some kids to watch our motos, despite the fact that we tried to explain we were volunteers not rich tourists. But whatever, we got to see the caves. However, on the way home, we had not gone more than a few hundred meters when two of the motos stopped working. We were not only upset that the kids we paid to “watch” our motos had obviously done something, but it was getting dark, we were far from the city, and these were rented bikes. The first thing we checked was the gas thinking they had somehow picked the lock and siphoned it, but that was fine. Call it luck/providence/coincidence or whatever you like, but one member of our party happens to spend his spare time fixing up old cars, and he thought to check if there was a switch-off valve preventing gas from getting into the carburetor. Sure enough, those kids had flipped the valve, and would no doubt have offered to fix it for us (for a fee!) had we not been able to drive a short distance away and solve the problem on our own. After having a really interesting and fun day, it was too bad that it ended with such a rotten feeling.

Though so many children in those touristy coastal towns make their living by perfecting the art of scamming/stealing/begging/conniving money from foreigners, there is hope. In Sihanoukville, there are a couple of drop in centres for children who would otherwise work on the beaches selling things. Galuh volunteers at one such centre called the Cambodian Children’s Painting Project. Kids can come on the condition that they go to school and do not go sell things on the beach. In return, the centre offers classes in English and Khmer, supplies for arts and craft which are sold in a gallery to help support the centre, food, and most importantly a safe environment. These drop in centres have the daring goal of breaking the cycle of illiteracy, human trafficking, and poverty. Sitting there and watching the kids play, I was struck by how different life for them would be without this drop in centre. Here, there is a space for them to just be kids. No need to sell things, no abuse, no wondering where the next meal will come from, no fear of what will happen when they are too old to sell things on the beach. Here they can just be kids, if only for a few hours each day. The Cambodian Children’s Paining Project is heading towards a difficult time of transition, raised rent, and searching for a new director. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers so that they will be able to continue to break chains and give children a safe and hopeful future.  

My other excursions gave me a taste of the endangered beauty of Cambodia. Ream National Park on the coast is known for excellent birding. I saw many Kites, Sea Eagles, and Kingfishers there. It was great! I also caught a rare glimpse of a Lesser Adjutant in the mangroves on the ride back up the river to our bus! I was so excited that I started jumping up and down in my seat. Other passengers on the boat looked at me with either amused or confused expressions, but I didn’t care! It was worth the whole day trip to see that one bird. But despite my jubilation at seeing an Adjutant, Kites, and Kingfishers, I should have seen a lot more birds. On Koh Rong island, I hardly saw any birds at all. On that supposedly remote, untouched island, there were no birds. There is something wrong with this picture. At Bokor National Park the tour was more historical than nature-oriented. I was told that there was no trekking in the forest (this is false, and therefore I will have to go back). In both national parks, large resorts and casinos are being built, some by foreign companies. So much land is being sold for development. If there are already few birds, what will this development do to the remaining wildlife? Southeast Asia is a hotspot for biodiversity, and it saddens me to see it being sold away, when it should be protected and conserved, for the benefit of the people that live here as much as for the wildlife.   Despite the downer of so much development, my tour of Bokor National Park did have a very uplifting moment. Our tour stopped to eat lunch on a rocky outcropping overlooking a 100 year old church on one side, and a steep densely forested drop to the ocean on the other side. Suddenly we were surrounded by a group of African men and women who formed a circle nearby and started singing praises to God. Their voices rang out from the mountain top in perfect harmony.Nneeding no music other than the sound of the wind sweeping over the rocks, no roof other than the clear sky, they sang for an audience of One. It was so refreshing, rejuvenating, and uplifting to behold. I started singing along to the familiar hymns between bites of food and tapping my feet to the beat. How my soul longed to join them in such Spirit filled praise as I have not witnessed since coming to Cambodia, if only I was not a part of a tour with a pressing agenda.

My brief exploration into the parks of Cambodia has convinced me that I need to get out and see more. The area I went to wasn’t really designed for ecotourism or seeing the natural wonders I know are there. I know there are hornbills and monkey in the forests, but getting out to see them will just take a bit more effort. I know there are untouched beaches and undeveloped forests, but I’ll just have to search a bit harder to find them.  It was lovely to take some vacation and explore Cambodia. I can’t wait to get out and do it again! Next time I will take my “Ultimate Cambodia” guide recently given to me by some MCCers just finishing their term, and armed with my binoculars I will explore some areas off-the-beaten track!

To all of you whose attention I managed to keep to the end of this incredibly long post, I hope my stories were not only amusing, but gave you something to think about.

Wishing you all the best. May you be filled with strong hope and confident expectation this Advent Season!

Rebecca

Galuh and I on the beach

Girl at the Cambodian Children't Painting Project showing off her new puppet!

Stalactite or Stalagmite?

The beach was as amazing as it looks, and those clouds were as stormy as they look

The Mountain Top

Busy trying out new coloured ink pencils at the drop-in centre.

Sunset river cruise in Kampot after the visit to Bokor National Park