On forest puddles, mahouts, and durians galore

The pace of life in Mesang is growing on me more and more every day. The days slip by and I realize that I haven’t posted the blog that I wrote a week ago. Here is a brief look at my most recent vacation to Mondulkiri and MCC’s staff retreat. I’ll give an update on how things are going in Mesang and at ODOV in my next post!

What a wonderful 10 days of vacation I had this past month! The 12^th to the 15^th was a holiday for the King’s birthday (why we get three days off for that is beyond me, but I’m sure not complaining!). My friend Galuh and I went to Mondulkiri for 3 days; a beautiful hilly and forested province in the north east of the country. We stayed at a quiet guesthouse just outside of town that was recommended to us by other MCCers. I went birding every day, and saw several “lifers” every day (seeing a species for the first time). I even got Galuh interested in bird-watching; she sounded almost as excited as I did whenever she spotted something new in the trees around our bungalow. Or maybe she was just enthusiastic about birding because there wasn’t a whole lot else to do out there. We did, however, take a motorcycle tour of some waterfalls, hill-top lookouts where you could see a “forest sea”, coffee plantations, and indigenous minority villages. As beautiful and refreshing as Mondulkiri was, it was sad to see large swaths of forest disappearing before our very eyes. The “forest sea” is rapidly turning into “forest puddles”.       
                      

Galuh and I at one of the famous waterfalls in Mondulkiri. This shot doesn't give you full appreciation for the number of Cambodians visiting here on the holiday, picnicing and dressing up in traditional minority tribe clothes (complete with fake weapons and wreaths of flowers).

The following day we supported the budding eco-tourism industry and went on an elephant riding daytrip; through the cow pastures, past the still-smouldering slash and burn sites, down into the steep valley, to a lovely river. The elephants are still used for occasional work by the locals: hauling wood or rubber from the forest. After taking us down to the river, they went away and did their thing for a few hours while we relaxed and swam in the cool shade. Then the elephants and their mahouts (keepers) came back, had a refreshing swim in the river. We got to “help” scrub down the elephants and swim with them in the water. At one point there must have been 4-5 of them flopping around or gingerly feeling for solid footing in the turbid water, but not once did I feel the least bit scared. In awe, yes, but not scared. They were so huge and powerful and strangely graceful, and never once did I fear that they would squish me. As I sat bare-back on the neck of one as she rose out of the water and climbed up the bank, I knew she would never drop me.

Me on an elephant!!!

During the longer trip to and from the river we sat in little baskets on top of the elephant. It was rather hard to get a picture of us and the elephant from where we sat, so we had the brilliant idea to take a picture of our shadow!

That couple's elephant kept stopping to eat.

After the elephant adventures, Galuh and I went back to Phnom Penh for a couple of days and joined up with the rest of the MCC staff (and their families) for a staff retreat. We drove a couple of hours away, but this time we went south-west towards the coast to the province of Kampot. We stayed at another lovely “resort” just outside of town that had bungalows and rooms enough for us all. The food was delicious- last month some ODOV staff were commenting that I was getting too skinny (not a compliment here), but I’m sure I just gained back in one week all that I had lost! And yes, in Cambodia it is perfectly acceptable to comment on weight and health issues with your colleagues.

During the retreat we had some excellent and very useful sessions on stress, cleverly followed by a look at different personality types. Always helpful to be aware of how to best work with different personality types and know what stresses them out. But the thing I liked best about the retreat was just getting to hang out with everyone. I see everyone in Phnom Penh every month or two for team meetings, but then our conversation is almost always the same: “How are you? how is Mesang? how are things going with your partner organization?” It was great to have so much time to be together: kayaking, biking, swimming, eating, passing babies around, singing, playing games, visiting a non-existent waterfall…. Funny story, that. We decided to stop at this waterfall for a picnic lunch on the way home (and by picnic I mean you order rice and a few dishes from a restaurant across the road and they bring it over to the picnic shelter). Cambodians love their waterfall picnics. Only, there wasn’t a waterfall, just some rapids on a narrow river. We were told to go upstream a bit and there would be a bridge and a waterfall. So, we started walking. But as the restaurants thinned, we knew something wasn’t right. Finally, a hydro dam came into view. Realizing there would be no falls above the dam, we gave up and turned around. Maybe there used to be a waterfall, or maybe they were referring to the stream all along, who knows? Regardless, we had a nice lunch, and a fun time playing at the water’s edge. This region is also apparently the durian capital of Cambodia. Now, if you’ve never heard of durian before, that’s likely because you can smell it before you see it. I’ve actually never tried this pungent fruit myself and have little desire to do so, though some people here love it. Enough to buy over 10kg of it to take home, anyway. Thankfully all of the durian was confined to one of the vans, and not the one I was sitting on.

It’s hard now not to think of the end of my stay in Cambodia. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of something to add to my August to-do list, ODOV staff ask me questions about when I leave or how many people can fly in one airplane, or I correspond with MCCers in Mozambique. I’ve even started dedicating a bit of time each day to learning Portuguese, using a fantastic, free online program. My sister Janet thought it would be fun to learn Portuguese as well, and is already at least 5 lessons ahead of me! Not that this is a competition or anything… However, this is the time I need to be most present in Cambodia. There is so much I still want to do with ODOV to finish up what I’ve been working on and prepare the way for the next SALTer who is to arrive; still more festivals and holidays to look forward to; still more people to visit and soon say goodbye to.

All the best,

Rebecca

On pig toes, Prime Ministers, and life lessons

Happy Khmer New Year!

What a month it has been! April started with a family celebration to honour my host family’s Chinese ancestors. Then, in the middle of the month, there was an entire week of holidays to celebrate the Khmer New Year. The month closed off with a visit to our town by the Prime Minister of Cambodia. To top it all off, the staff at ODOV have been busy with a recent purchase of some rice paddies adjacent to the demonstration farm, and the arrival of two cows to complete our animal raising and integrated farming demonstration. It has now been nearly two months since I was last in Phnom Penh, but with all going on, I haven’t missed it. In fact, the provinces are the best place to celebrate the New Year, since everyone vacates the cities anyway to go back to their homeland.

Even though I feel a bit intrusive when I take photos sometimes, I plucked up the resolve to record the Chinese ancestor ceremony. The rest of my pictures are on facebook in the album Bon Phnom Pnor (celebration mountain grave). All of my extended host family gathered from far and wide to celebrate. Around 7 in the morning we started moving all of the food and stuff to the graveyard, which was just a couple of minutes from our house. A tent had been set up, and everyone worked together to decorate the two graves with colourful strips of paper and setting offerings of food, paper Lexus cars (THE car to have in Cambodia), money, etc. in front of the graves. As people arrived they burned some incense and prayed in front of the graves, asking for good luck/happiness for the new year. After a while, two monks came, and chanted prayers and sprinkled us with water. The monks ate a sample of our food while someone else led a prayer, then they left and the family ate together. And so, to add to my list of new experiences in Cambodia is this: drinking beer and eating a pig’s foot at 9 in the morning in a graveyard.

The large mound over the grave is being decorated with strips of paper, while other family members lay out the food, paper Lexus cars, and other things in front of the grave. You can't see it, but there is also an entire roast pig and a few chickens in front as well. All of the little bowls of rice even have their own chopsticks.



Three generations kneeling together, holding incense, asking the ancestors for good luck, health and happiness for the new year.

Younger cousin helping to stick the strips of colourful paper into the sandy mound.

Setting a sample of food and drink before the monks before the praying began.

A very similar ceremony took place at ODOV a couple of weeks later on the day before New Year. We didn’t get any work done that day as the entire morning was taken up with a ceremony at the office very similar to the one described above. However, obviously there were no graves inside the office, but instead the whole roast pig was placed in front of a small “spirit house”. That afternoon, we all worked together to prepare food and ate/drank together in the late afternoon. I was unfortunate enough to be sitting picking through greens in the same room as the person cutting up the roast pig. It was to the great amusement of everyone in the room that he kept handing me all of the special pieces of meat: the crispy skin, chewy ear, part of the nose, the foot, and the brain. Most of it tasted OK as long as you didn’t dwell too much on what it was you were eating, but the brain was actually just disgusting. Later that same day, someone brought in a bucket of what I quickly discerned was dog meat (though they used a variety of other names I did not understand), because everyone who came in the room kept asking me if I’d ever tried it. The director of ODOV later told me that dog meat is also called “the security guard” or “best friend”. Here, dog is a special occasion food that is eaten while drinking beer, and many women refuse to eat it at all. However, the peer pressure was too much and I finally succumbed to the inevitable and tried a piece. Those in the room had a great laugh when I picked a giant dead ant off my spoon with obvious disgust, only to discover that the dish was full of them and they were supposed to be there!

The actual New Year was no less exciting. Lots of relatives from Vietnam came to visit my host family. Some of them had not been back to Cambodia in over 30 years since they fled from Pol Pot’s regime. We went together to visit some more relatives in a town an hour and a half away. I felt some pride to discover that I knew the bumpy dusty roads better than the Vietnamese relatives and switched to be a moto driver rather than passenger because I was faster. The following day, I got sick with a fever and unhappy digestive system for the second time in Cambodia. I was not the only one, however. Most of my host family felt it to some extent. We must have all eaten something funny. Despite the fact that everyone in the family got sick, my host mother blamed our fevers on different “hot” foods we had eaten the day previous to showing symptoms. I ate sour oranges and half a glass of beer the day before, my little brother had too much cake and sugar cane juice… With a list of “hot” foods so long, it’s no wonder she’s right every time someone becomes ill. And in case you are wondering, there are “cold” foods such as cucumbers, melons, and other types of fruit, that will not make you sick. But thankfully I got over it quickly, and went with my host family to visit a couple of temples later in the week. During the New Year week, people go to the temples in the morning to pray and eat together, and in the afternoons and evenings, there is dancing, food vendors, and lots of people just hanging out. It was tons of fun! For being so concerned about my health while I was lying sick with a fever on Monday and Tuesday, my host mother had no qualms about dragging me up to dance and dance until 11 PM on Wednesday evening. It was all rather exhausting, but worth it.

It’s been a rather exciting weekend- a temple in a village nearby was recently re-built, and there was a big celebration/fair lasting all weekend. Despite the fact that there were thousands of people milling around, and it was dark out, I still managed to see at least a dozen people I knew (not counting those I came with). We went at around 7 (the sun had long set) and as the night drew on, the crowds grew on the fields behind the temple. Food vendors selling baby chicken eggs, corn on the cob, freshwater snails, and cakes; Helium balloons “gangnam style”; live theatre; incense and prayers floating over the rice fields from the temple; people of all ages from all walks of life. We stayed out until 10:30 PM on Saturday, well past our usual 9:30 bedtime. Sunday evening it rained, so we stayed home. Monday morning I awoke with the opening song from “Tangled” stuck in my head, but unlike Rapunzel’s lamentations, it was anything but a “usual morning routine” for me. My host mother knocked on my door at 5 AM, yelling for my host father, my oldest host sister, and myself to hurry and get ready. After stuffing noodle soup down our throats and making sure we all had passes pinned to the front of our shirts, she rushed us out the door. The three of us drove back to the Wat in the early morning light along with what seemed to be at least half the town, in time to get seats for the visit from the Prime Minister! He flew in by helicopter, made a rather long speech (the only part of which I understood was that he was sorry his wife could not also come, and that he was promising to pave the road all the way into Mesang), shook a few hands, cut the ribbon in front of the temple, and left.   

I was held up at the gate with my Aunt (we were going to sit together as my sister was with other students, and my host father with government staff), and for a moment wondered if I might get my name put on a special list of people who got to shake the Prime Minister’s hand (that or refused to be let in at all) because the guard was talking for a while into his radio. But I’ll never know what was going to happen, because before they could decide what to do about me, my host father came back and rescued us and pulled us inside. It was good he did too, because we had a hard enough time finding seats as it was. And as cool as it would have been to meet the Prime Minister of Cambodia, I already have more than my share of fame and spotlight, and was glad to just be part of the crowd for once. My host sister Thea went to a wedding with me Sunday afternoon (my 5^th in Cambodia!), and got a taste for what it’s like to be me. People are used to me in town now, but that day we were traveling to another village and all along the road, people kept saying Hello! Hello! She asked me if people always do that. To be fair, we did stand out more than usual because I was wearing sparkly pink sleeveless dancing dress, not my normal attire of long pants, sweater, hat, and sunglasses. Though, you would be surprised how many people can still spot the foreigner even when I’m covered head to toe.  

I suppose I should have a take-away message from this post; something besides “life is short, party whenever you can.” It’s now been two months since I’ve last been to the city. In two and a half months I fly out of Cambodia. I must say that even though I’ve stopped formally learning Khmer, I’ve noticed a big improvement in my ability to communicate with others. It has really been wonderful to just LIVE here for the past two months, really feeling more and more that I am becoming a part of the community. I look forward to the same things my host family does, get invited to the same weddings as my co-workers, complain about the heat along with everyone else, am finally less of a “guest” than other people, and get sent to the market to buy ice with my little sister. It is sad to think that in a little over two months I’ll be leaving. But as I’ve probably mentioned before, some of the best advice I was ever given was to live like I am going to be here forever. I stumbled and nearly dropped that bit of wisdom when I found out that it was not possible for me to stay in Cambodia as I had long been hoping. But even now with Mozambique on the horizon, and the whole slew of mixed emotions that brings, I am determined more than ever to live like I won’t be leaving Cambodia, because I know that when I do leave, I will undoubtedly be the richer for it.

Until next time,

Rebecca

“Mountains never meet, but people do.”

               Tanzanian saying