On culture conversations, animals in the news, and an ODOV update.

My proficiency in Khmer has advanced sufficiently that I can now actively participate in conversation with my host mother (at least more actively than my long perfected habit of ‘nod and smile’). The past couple weeks have held some particularly interesting conversations as they reveal a lot about my perception of Khmer culture, and their perception of mine. They also are good for a laugh J
Conversation #1 takes place at the dinner table, as my host mother is munching on a piece of dried dog meat, left over from the previous evening’s festivities.

Ma: Have you ever eaten dog?

Me: Yes, at ODOV’s office. But I do not like to eat it.

Ma: Oh, it is very delicious. Do they eat dog in Canada?

Me: No.

Ma: You have dogs though, right? You raise them and feed them, but do not eat them?

Me: No. Dogs are like part of the family.

Ma: But even when they get old and die, you still do not eat them?

Me: No. (Thinking: didn’t I just say like they were part of the family??)

Conversation #2 takes place in the evening. The family is hanging out in the living room after dinner watching television, and I am studying Portuguese to give me a head start on the language learning for when I move to Mozambique in September.

Ma: What are you doing?

Me: Studying Portuguese language. After I leave Cambodia I am going to work in Africa for three years, and they do not speak English. They speak Portuguese.

Ma: Oh! But Africa is so hot! What do you do there?

Me: Similar to what I do at ODOV. I will teach students at high school how to grow vegetables.

Ma: Will you get a salary there?

Me: No, but I will get a house and food and a motorcycle, same as I do now.

Ma: Oh, I pity you! I know a Peace Corp Volunteer (who used to live just up the street a couple years ago) who had to move to China to teach English because it was so difficult for her to find a job in America. I pity you. But Africa is so so hot, their skin is black black. You should move to Thailand to find a job instead. Thailand is nice.

Me: (Tried to explain that temperature is similar to Cambodia, but failed. There is this understanding in Cambodia that skin colour is directly related to surrounding temperature, therefore Africa must be a scorching desert. Within a country, variations in skin colour are explained by what the mother ate during pregnancy).

I was about to try to explain that I am not a migratory worker like all those Cambodians who leave home and poor job markets behind and move to Thailand in search of a job. But then I thought, maybe that is exactly what I am doing. I, along with all of the Peace Corps Volunteers, English teachers in Korea, and international development workers, am a part of the next generation of migrant workers, leaving home behind in search of a new way of life.

Speaking of migrating to new places, most of you probably already know that I am preparing to go to Mozambique in September. But before that, I am migrating back home for the month of August, a time that is swiftly approaching. I only have a couple of weeks’ worth of productive workdays left at ODOV. My last day in Mesang is the 12^th of July. My sister Janet is also coming to visit me for the first week of July when she finishes her teaching job in Korea. I am super excited for that. The other SALTers and I have prepared a list of all of the things we want to do in the city in our last few days together before the three of us fly out on the 17^th of July. Even though we leave Cambodia on the 17^th of July, I won’t return to New Brunswick until the 1^st of August because I must attend a SALT re-entry retreat in the States, as well as a general orientation to prepare for going to Mozambique.

So, with only a couple weeks total left at ODOV, this is as good a time as any to give an update on what I’ve been working on the past few months. At the beginning of May ODOV got some fantastic news. They’ve received a very large grant from the Canadian Food Grains Bank to implement a three year Integrated Community Development Project. This is basically a repeat of a three-year project funded by MCC that just finished in March, with a few changes based on their previous experience. Through this project ODOV helps establish village banks and agriculture cooperatives so farmers can save money and access low interest rate loans; trains farmers in sustainable agriculture and nutritious food preparation; and provides the inputs necessary for farmers to make natural fertilizer and start small home-gardens, fish, and chicken raising. It was an incredibly valuable learning experience for me to be a part of that whole process from project proposal, defining objectives and project indicators, draft after draft back and forth with MCC advisors and CFGB funding staff, and finally approval! I also worked with the executive director of ODOV to make a baseline survey for the project which he later translated into Khmer. I was present when he held a meeting with the field staff to explain the survey. Afterwards, the staff practiced the survey on each other. I told Thea she could ask me the questions and I could follow along since the questions were also printed in English. Through lack of imagination, I started answering the survey listing the ages and occupations of my real family in Canada. However, it was soon apparently that we own nothing of value: no animals (cats and dogs don’t count), no water pump, no ox-cart, not even a motorcycle. Pretty soon I had to start making things up. Imagine a family that doesn’t have so much as one square meter of rice field! I had us making a modest income selling fish from our fish pond and pumpkins and cucumbers from our garden as well. I suppose it is true that we have a garden and a fish pond at home, though most Cambodians would probably shake their head in confusion at the handful of goldfish and all the flowers and trees that aren’t good for eating. Most Cambodians are at least a bit impressed though when I tell them I sometimes help my father grow vegetables.

Back from the bunny trail… I have also been updating ODOV’s website some more, helping with other grant proposals, working on organizing ODOV’s database, and of course, planting vegetables! The vegetable growing slacked off during the holidays in April, and then it was too hot to really grow anything besides green onions. But now things are picking up again. I have two beds of tomatoes grown from seeds I saved from the previous crop. Since the original seeds were from an unknown source, we weren’t even sure if any seeds saved would be viable, but they seem to be coming along splendidly! I hope they held up alright under all that rain we had last night. From now on, any rain in Canada will seem but a drizzle, and most thunderstorms will seem brief, and mild.

Along with the rains come poor roads, which is unfortunate as I have a lot of traveling ahead of me in this next month! Next year, the road will be paved all the way out to Mesang making travel much easier. I’m almost sorry that the road will be paved as it will surely mean that Mesang will lose the rural feel I’ve come to love. I’m not sure if any of you are up on Cambodian news, but there is an election coming up at the end of July, hence the new road. In addition to reading the Cambodian news, I try to read the BBC world news every now and again, as well as CBC’s New Brunswick news. It’s so easy just to get caught up in our own small world and not be in touch with what’s going on around the globe. This is true of Cambodians just as it is of Canadians. If I was more eloquent in speech and more philosophical in thought, I could probably come up with a very striking statement about ironies of reading the New Brunswick news from Cambodia. I made note this year of every time animals feature in the headlines of the New Brunswick news. Here’s a few that I can remember off the top of my head: it was proven with genetics that that guy actually did shoot a wolf in northern NB, a series of ongoing articles about Tiny the 30lb cat rescued by the SPCA, formation of a moose corridor between NB and NS to help with moose breeding, the day someone skinned a wild animal and left it on a lamppost in downtown Fredericton, and my personal favourite: two collisions caused by one family of ducks on the Vanier Highway in Fredericton. Two ducks died, but no one else sustained any serious injuries.

I love New Brunswick. I love that I grew up in a place where people care enough about fender benders and baby ducks that it makes the front page news. Here, in a country barely bigger in land mass than New Brunswick, the news is rife with political corruption, land grabbing and forced evictions (largely thanks to political corruption), illegal logging, false conviction and jailing of innocent people to cover up said forced evictions and illegal logging, garment factory strikes due to low wages and working conditions, and other human rights violations (in addition to previous topics). Sometimes I wonder: if I grew up caring that much about overweight cats and lonely moose, how can I care about all those poor workers, displaced and voiceless peoples, and bulldozed forests without being overwhelmed? I’m not really sure what my point in all this is. I’m not saying that New Brunswickers should stop caring about ducks for then it would cease to be the home I love; we just need to remember that caring about those things is a privilege of the greatest kind, and we should at the same time keep perspective, not ignoring the needs of others in our communities and in our world.  

That’s all the reflections for now. I’ll be busy the next few weeks what with traveling, finishing up at ODOV, and moving back to the city, but I’ll try to write one last time before I leave. If not, I’ll write to you again from Akron, Pennsylvania!

Yours truly,

Rebecca

PS, Can't remember if I've introduced these guys on the blog yet or not. Oh well, you can never get too much kitten cuteness.

In loving memory of Merida- the a most curious and adventurous cat who found out too late that mean black dog downstairs doesn't make a good friend.

Alternately called pumpkin pie, cinnamon, custard, cream... really whatever food I happen to be hungry for at the moment.

My little Ibis, named after the endangered bird due to her shaky start at life. Runt of the litter, she fell off the stairs when she was young, met the same black dog, but was lucky enough to live to tell the tale. She held on by a thread for a while and is still a little skinny, but doing just fine.  



An old picture from October-ish. The road to Mesang as it looks during the rainy season. No, I did not get wet while driving that time, but I have gotten wet since!