On life, the universe, and everything else from terrible television to torte a la tortue.

Those of you who follow my blog regularly may have noticed that I always try to include a funny story, something educational (normally about culture), something about my daily life, and something about my journey with God. The past month or so I’ve sometimes been finding it hard to find something to talk about for all of these categories, and I have finally figured out the reason why. They are all blending together into one category called life. I am finally able to laugh WITH people and even AT other people instead of just laughing at myself (though that still happens an aweful lot; for example, I went with my host mother to visit a neighbour’s house last Saturday, and it turns out it was the house of the gardener at ODOV who had told me before that his house was near mine and I should come and visit. As we were leaving, he asked “Did you know how to get to my house?” As I previously had no idea which was his, I replied “no”. Then they all started laughing at me. Turns out he actually asked “DO you now know how to get to my house” Seeing as how it is literally three doors down from my own, I would have to be pretty dumb to get lost when you can practically see his house from mine.) Though I still have much to learn about Khmer culture, many things I used to have to remember are second nature now, such as how to greet people, table manners, hearing tinny music at 4:30 AM, when it is appropriate to honk your horn (pretty much all the time, in case you were wondering), etc. As for daily life, why wouldn’t everyone want to eat rice three times a day? And who needs showers when a bucket works just fine? My spiritual journey continues as always, but even that has changed recently into more normal quiet times instead of “everything is so different, I can’t believe I’m here, help me God!” I can believe I’m here, and at this moment there is no place I’d rather be. 

Not to say that I don’t miss home, my family, friends, church, the cool fresh air of the east coast, and ice cream. Of course I miss those things and look forward to having them all again come July. But I have also been able to find a way of life here in Cambodia, and though it is vastly different from my life at home in Canada, I feel happy and at home here as well. One day I was reading my bible, and it was talking about giving up everything to follow Jesus. It is one of those verses where I think a lot of people tend to say “of course I would be willing to do that… if Jesus asked me”, but he already has. Of course that will look different depending on the situation. For me, it looks like this: suddenly being away from my family for a year doesn’t seem like such a long time from the perspective of eternity, eating rice three times every day is not such a big deal, using a bucket bath is a small price to pay, I can trust God to fully provide for my needs even when I am not able to be a regular member of a strong Christian community during my stay here.

Now, I may have shared this before, but I’ll say it again. Someone once shared a piece of wisdom with a group of university students at the Meeting Place Church that I have never forgotten. It was something along the lines of “wherever you are, live like you will be there forever.” This was a really important piece of wisdom for me to here, as I am one of those people who tends to guard her heart very closely until I am sure that something I invest my emotional energy into is something that is going to last long term. Even though I know that my stay in Cambodia is only for a year (at least for now), this piece of advice has really helped me to open up, get involved in the community here, be dedicated to learning the language, and enjoy life here in Cambodia as Cambodians live it, with the inevitable result of being in that vulnerable place where you become deeply attached. The more I learn about Cambodia, the more I am amazed at how far this country has come since the horror of the 70’s. My host mother even opened up the other week and started telling me about how her family split up and ran in different directions, many of them living in Vietnam during that time. She was only 2 months old when it all started. On the other hand, the more I learn of corruption, injustice, and environmental management disasters in the news, or hear about land-rights disputes in the emails sent around by MCC, my heart breaks for Cambodia, and I am reminded how much this country needs people sharing the love of God, the support of the nations, and for her own people to stand up and make a difference. I’ll talk more about that next time. Suffice it to say, that the longer I am here, the more I see of Cambodia’s joys and the sorrows, the more I am able to feel these joys and sorrows,  and the better I am able to understand God’s heart for the people of Cambodia.

Now this is all fine, but doesn’t solve the problem of what to blog about. But since we are on the topic of my life in Cambodia, and since I already have your undivided attention, I might as well go on a rant about television. After all, I spent a good hour and a half watching television with my family every day, which is a significant chunk of time. Cambodia airs daily television dramas from around Asia, all dubbed in Khmer. (I am not so sure I approve of the messages some of these shows give to young Cambodians, but unfortunately that’s not a battle I have the time to fight.) Sometimes we are watching up to three shows at once, flipping back in forth between commercials, at whim of whoever is holding the remote at the time. It is not uncommon in the course of one evening for us to watch snippets of Filipino, Indonesian, Cambodia, Korean, Chinese, and Indian dramas. Now, some of these shows are better than others. Some of the Khmer shows are very interesting, well done, and have given me further insight into khmer culture. However, there is this one show that drives me up the wall. First, let me explain one thing. Cambodians all think it is funny that I am scared of spiders. My host mother, whilst chasing a giant spider out of my room one morning, told me “it is OK, these ones do not bite. You can squash them with your hand.” Ummm, no thanks. BUT, nearly all Cambodians are scared of ghosts, and will do things like drive in the dark with the headlights off so ghosts don’t follow them home. Whenever dogs start barking in the night, I am told quite seriously that it is because of ghosts (not because of passing motorist we can’t see because they don’t have lights on). There was a new show that recently started about all of these people who turn into ghosts and start ripping people’s hearts out. Rather disturbing if it wasn’t so cheesily done. When it first started, someone told me it was a new Khmer show. My VERY first reaction was “THAT BIRD CALL DOES NOT BELONG IN CAMBODIA!!!!” I don’t even know what bird call they were playing on the soundtrack, but it didn’t belong. Nothing like messing up bird calls to drive a bird-nerd nuts. Then I thought I must have been mistaken and the show was from a different country, because it was clearly dubbed. But after careful observation, I decided that it was in fact a Cambodian show, they just recorded the soundtrack separately and did a terrible job lining it all up. Don’t even get me started about the concerts they show on the weekends when the dramas aren’t playing. They are little better than karaoke with backup dancers. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes they are great and I rather enjoy watching them, but sometimes the instruments aren’t even TUNED!! Aargh! Between the music and the birds, I guess I am hard to please.  

But enough about my television woes. I’ll survive. It has been very nice to spend the past couple of weekends just hanging out with my hot family. I really enjoy going to the market with my mother. This past weekend was very exciting at the market as a whole truckload of household supplies came in from Vietnam. The wares were spread out on large straw mats and everyone was crowding around haggling over the prices. There was also someone selling strange animals out of the back of a van. If that wasn’t sketchy enough to begin with, my mother told me they were good for medicine. And if THAT’s not bad enough, I didn’t even recognize what type of animals they were, with the exception of the snakes. Yikes! Thankfully my family did not buy any of them. However, we did eat a turtle they caught in the river last week. I’d meant to look up endangered turtles in Cambodia and if necessary rescue the poor creature from where it was being kept in the water cistern, but by the time I came home for lunch it was too late. At least I didn’t have time to name the turtle… that would really have been sad. More about naming animals next week.

Well, enough rambling for today. A quick update for those with some interest in what I am going to do after SALT: I have applied for an internship position with an organization called ECHO. They do pretty much the same thing I am doing at ODOV (testing different vegetables and techniques under different growing conditions) but on a larger scale in Florida. From there, they distribute information and seeds to farmers around the world. They also have offices in several countries the world and do trainings on agriculture and help local farmers grow a variety of vegetables. The interviews (if I make it that far), are in March. I am also looking to see if MCC has other agriculture related service positions; just because I can’t stay with MCC in Cambodia, doesn’t mean I can’t stay with MCC. For that matter, just because I can’t stay with MCC in Cambodia doesn’t mean I can’t stay in Cambodia. I’ll have made good progress on the language by the time this year’s up, and am looking into other organizations that do conservation work in Cambodia. Finally, I can always find a program in Canada and start my Masters this September. Please pray that God will guide me in the right direction as I explore options around the world.

Yours truly.

Dina and Visaa (host siblings), cutest kids in the world.

I went shopping for pants with my host mother, and she and the shopkeeper insisted so much that I finally caved and bought these pants. They are just os not me. But that is why they are so great! The first day I wore them to work, everyone commented on how beautiful they were and how I look just like Khmer.

 

On sequins and how to set proper expectations for the Cambodian cinema.

Dear Friends and Family, 
Cambodian Weddings… been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. Well, it is not so much a tee-shirt as it is an excessively embroidered, gaudy, superfluously sequined shirt. Think I am exaggerating? Take a look at the pictures below. I am wearing a traditional Cambodian dress. The shirt and the skirt are separate. You wear a brightly coloured shirt for weddings, and a white shirt for funerals. Nowadays most young woman prefer to wear more trendy or “sexy” dresses to wedding receptions, however, Jenna and I thought it would be fun to dress up in traditional clothes. I was even convinced to buy a pair of shiny gold shoes to go along with the dress. By that point, it was go big or go home.

Galuh (another MCC volunteer and I)  went and did our hair and makeup with the girls at the Mennonite Student Dorm (some of you may remember that we stayed at the dorm for a couple of weeks during orientation in september). It was one of the members of the Mennonite Church getting married, so the girls were all going, and that is how I was invited. It was so much fun to hang out with the girls for the afternoon! I haven’t seen most of them in so long. They did a great job with my hair, though I’m not sure they’ve had much experience doing makeup for foreigners; I don’t know what they put on my skin, but it made me so pale that I looked like I’d just spent two years in a library in the Canadian arctic. This wedding reception was thankfully indoors, not in one of those tents they set up in the middle of the street. The music was pretty good compared to many wedding I have heard from a distance. After the food and the briefest wedding speeches I have ever heard, the bouquet was tossed and the music began in earnest! It was not long before I was dragged up to join in the dancing. It was quite fun actually, and since the same 8-16 beat pattern is repeated for the whole 10 minute song, it is quite easy to catch on to the moves though I was hardly graceful.  

Now, living here in Cambodia, I have come accepted that there are certain things I have to give up, sacrifice, or live without, and I am OK with that. However, every once in a while it is nice to enjoy something from home (a good slice of pizza for example). When I found out that Les Miserables was going to be playing in theatres in Phnom Penh the same weekend as we wedding, I was unbelievably excited. I have been waiting for the movie to come out for years! My sister and I read the entire 1200 pp book out loud together, and soon became fans of the musical, listening to the soundtrack on youtube. I know all the songs by heart and was so excited to see it in theatres that nothing could ruin it for me! At least, that is what I thought. Before I begin this narrative, know that I had one night, and one night only where it was possible for me to get out and see the movie with Jenna and Galuh. First of all, we forgot to double check the showtimes and had to rush out the door, running breathless into the theatre 5 minutes into the movie. But we were there. The first half hour was fabulous. And then, right as Anne Hathaway began her heartrending song “I dreamed a dream” the picture cut out for 20 seconds. We were left with the music and Khmer subtitles on a black screen. And then it happened again… and again. And the music started cutting out too and only the Khmer subtitles kept flashing across the screen. They kept apologizing and even gave us all free coke, but an hour into the movie they gave up trying to fix the problem, and gave us all a full refund, which is all great, unless this is your one and only chance to see the movie before heading back to the province. I remembered seeing that Les Miserables was showing at another theatre across town a bit later in the evening. As we purchased our tickets the man at the counter informed us that it started half an hour previously. He was noticeably confused when we said “that’s fine!”. It turns out we had better seats, there were no subtitles, and the sound was better at this theatre (so long as you ignored the explosions from the movie next door). However, it was hard to really relax and enjoy it, not to mention that I was getting hungry, thirsty, and tired at this point. When I get home to Canada, it is the first movie I’m going to watch on my parent’s TV (complete with surround sound and fresh made popcorn).

Finally, you may be wondering by now what I’m going to be doing next year since my time in Cambodia is nearly half over. Some of you know that I had been hoping to stay in Cambodia for another year working for MCC and helping out at ODOV. Things have been going so well here, and I feeling like I could most effectively continue to help people by staying in this town. However, I have recently found out that, for many reasons, it is not possible for me to stay with MCC. I am sure that since God has closed this door that he will open another one. I am sad that I won’t be able to stay here- people have already been saying they are going to miss me, and I know for sure that I will miss them. But I am trusting that God will show me where he wants me to go and what he wants me to do next year. I was feeling rather confused and unsure about it all, when I got an email from my grandmother this morning. Knowing nothing yet of these recent developments, the verse she shared with me was remarkably fitting and just what I needed to hear.

Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as  
you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of  
the Holy Spirit."

Yours, 

Rebecca

The four MCC volunteers: Humberto, Warren, me, and Galuh... and on the left our photo-bombing friend Rota! 

To give you an idea what the party was like... this is a group of girls from the Mennonite student dorm. We all sat at round tables, and the food was placed on a swiveling centre. You take the food you want with chopsticks and put it in your bowl, and as one dish is finished, a new one is added. 

Dancing! Apparently I didn't know a photo was being taken. Often we danced with a partner (in this song  they were standing opposite to us), but it was mostly girls with girls and guys with guys. We had some very patient teachers! 

On gangnam style, new food experiences, and perspective matters

Dear friends and family,

That’s right folks, Gangnam Style has reached even rural villages in Cambodia. Every night the restaurant down the street plays music really loud, and every night I watch my 2 year old brother dance along to gangnam style. If you have not heard of Gangnam style, get out from under your rock and take a look on youtube. This song from the Korean singer Psy is the biggest song to hit the world since… I don’t know… since Justin Bieber’s Baby Baby, or probably even bigger. On the other hand, if you haven’t heard this song, you should probably get bonus points for not conforming to the ways of the world! Trust me, you are not missing much.  It is kind of sad really how much influence there is through television here, starting with kids so young. Some of you may have seen my comment on facebook how less than 1% of homes in my district that electricity, but 72% have televisions. These televisions and any lights are powered by batteries, which are recharged by someone who has made a business of buying a generator and charging batteries. You don’t really expect to walk around a rural Cambodian village where nearly 100% of people still farm a small plot of rice with a cow or water buffalo, and see kids running around singing “sexy lady” (not having a clue what it means), and dancing gangnam style. But unfortunately it seems that is the way things go here. Every day the world is getting smaller, and you’ve got to run just to stand still. For Cambodia, that partially entails a push to learn English in schools and the idolization of all things Korean, including their music.

On a more positive note, I often forget to mention it, but hardly a week goes by when I don’t try at least one new fruit or vegetable or food. This week I tried a sauce for dipping sour fruit, which, if I understood correctly, is made from tiny frogs. It didn’t taste very good, even before I knew it was made from tiny frogs. I also tried palm fruit juice fresh from a palm fruit that my mother was cutting up to put in soup. This WAS good. She said you can’t buy them at the market here and have to get them from friends with sugar palm trees. And as you might have guessed, this fruit is also used for making sugar. My mother brought me to see a small family operation where they were boiling a huge shallow dish of the stuff outside. My host mother also tried to teach me how to separate good rice from un-husked rice. Most families in the country buy huge bags of rice that have been poorly sorted with some of the un-husked rice still remaining. My mother showed me how to put a scoop of rice into a shallow woven basket with little rice sized holes. The smaller husked rice falls through, and the inedible bits collect in the centre. These are then fed to the chickens. The circular sifting motion is actually much harder than it looks! I had a delicious dessert the other day. It was balls of rice steeped in a red wine. It was actually delicious. I also wrapped noom (cake) for the first time (the kind of cake that is actually sticky rice normally with some combination of banana, coconut, pig fat/soybean inside). Mine looked rather sloppy I am afraid, but it was fun to try! Next week I am attending my first Cambodia wedding. I am pretty much guaranteed to have new food to try there, though I am not so sure if I am looking forward to delicacies that they will offer!

I thought I should give a bit of an update on my language “lessons” for those of you curious about how I am getting along. For a long time I felt like I wasn’t really making any progress, but now looking back, I am able to understand so much more and communicate so much more with people. Even though I haven’t memorized lists of vocabulary as I had imagined I would (and like we did during language training in orientation), my familiarity with sentence structure has grown considerably, making it easier for me to follow what people say, even though I still have a long ways to go to learn vocabulary. Mostly my language partner has been helping me with reading, which is a great way to learn new words (in the context of a story). As you can see below, normally I copy the short stories or discussion from the grade 3 Khmer language book I have, try to find all the words I know, and get help with the rest from my language partner. The stories are a bit silly sometimes… all about exceptionally studious students, extra helpful kids, and shinning happy people, but it is a good way to learn! For the English part of the lesson, we generally practice conversation.

I think I have learned just as much about Khmer culture during these discussions as she has learned English. We have discussed everything from vehicles to music, gangsters to Cambodian folk tales. I have come to learn that thanks to the cultures we come from, our perspectives on several matters are vastly different. For example, she asked me how many friends I had on Facebook, I replied that I had nearly 500, sounding embarrassed that I had so many and hadn’t cleaned it out in a while. Her look of shock however, was not that I had so many, but so few. She has over 5000 “friends” on facebook. One day, we started talking about beauty. I have already mentioned that people like my nose, but of course they also like my light skin. Nearly every skin care product you buy here has skin whitening properties. I had fun telling her about tanning machines at home. It blew her mind that people would pay money to make their skin darker. I quickly informed her that I was not one of those people, but I certainly don’t mind the tan I have naturally (and inevitably) have acquired here. She also told me that in Mesang high school, there are a lot of gangsters. Gotta watch out for those gangsters! Now, I don’t know about you, but when I think of gangsters, a certain image comes to mind. That image does not fit at all with the bicycle riding, school-uniform wearing, slender, bicycle riding Cambodians that I see heading to school every day in my rural village. I tried to ask her what she meant by gangster. The most I could understand was that they drink a lot (of alcohol) and wear a certain brand of clothing (Monster). At home that would make them troublemakers at best. Now, maybe there is a lot more going on behind the scenes that I don’t see. I would be wrong to judge by appearance alone.  Speaking of appearances, as you know, I get a lot of “hellos” whenever I bike around. However, recently, two people in one day greeted me in Khmer. I was so touched and so happy! Either thought about it enough to realize that after 4 months in Mesang I should know enough to say hello in Cambodian, they are getting used to seeing me around and less shy of me, or best yet, they didn’t think about it and it just came out in Khmer. The last one is my hope! For this year!

I hope you all had a wonderful New Years, and that those of you living in colder places have had time to enjoy the snow!

All the best,

Ma separating rice. She makes it look easy!

I realized that I never put a photo of my all-purpose kroma scarf, so here it is! 

The grade 3 Khmer school book is full of short stories and  dialogues such as this. These stories teach little Cambodian kids how to be nice and share their toys, but teach me vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar! 

Many Cambodians comment on how neat my handwriting is... maybe they never noticed how odiously slow I am at writing. Your writing would be neat too if you had to concentrate on every single line and squiggle. I then translate the story underneath (often literally word for word, so yes, I know the english grammar is not correct), and also write how to pronounce the trickier words.