First month at site

Everything is going pretty well. I am still adjusting to my new home and to working exclusively with Cambodians. Working across cultures presents a unique set of challenges.

One challenge is teaching. I started co-teaching with other English teachers. Each class has about 40 students with varying English skills; in every class, there is at least one student who speaks extremely well and usually about five students who cannot speak a word. In addition, many students do not have books and the book is not very good, but we are supposed to use it. There are ways to work around these challenges, but they require a lot of lesson planning that my co-teachers do not really want to do mainly because of them being too busy and “too busy.” They seem to have plenty of time to invite me to parties though.

It’s very early in my commitment though, so maybe things will change. A teacher that worked with the volunteer who was here before me is very committed to lesson planning and finding creative ways to teach. He does not teach grade 10, so we have not been teaching together. We have been working together on health projects though. We had a meeting for class monitors about swine flu, the flu and the common cold. The monitors will teach what they learned to their respective classes. A lot of what we taught was basic stuff and made me more aware of how undeveloped the health infrastructure here is. For example, students know little about the difference between a common cold and the flu.

This teacher also helps to organize an alcohol campaign on the commune level. They try to make villagers aware of the health dangers of alcohol. Many Khmer people do not know that alcohol can be dangerous and bad for your health. Some people think it makes you strong and helps cure diseases. The campaign is also trying to make it illegal to drink at pagodas and to buy alcohol when you are under the age of 13 (If there was a Cambodian prom, I imagine they would have a different set of problems compared to ours). The campaign also had a march around town and I gave a small speech. There were about 70 people there. My co-teacher will be writing a grant for this campaign to do more activities and I will help him.

An interesting thing about working with Cambodian people is their sense of time. Many of them do not plan ahead. They frequently call me and ask me to do something at that very moment. “Where are you? Come to this gathering now.” Or, I will see them when I am walking and they will invite me to have dinner with them in a half hour. Compared to planning oriented America, this can be difficult at times, especially if I already have plans. They believe I can drop all my plans to do whatever they have asked me. They also do not know how long things will take. I was not feeling well at the alcohol campaign and my friend told me it would end at 9am (it started at 7:30). It did not end until 11.

So how is my standard of living? I have no running water and pour a bucket of water on myself to shower. I do have a washing machine, so I don’t have to wash my clothes by hand. The washing machine is actually a very big deal. Hand-washing clothes can take hours, so I am lucky. We only have electricity for about four hours every day, so I get to use my computer at that time if I want to watch a dvd or something. When I do get the internet, I usually put a bunch of news articles in a word document on my flash drive so I can read them when I am home (so feel free to email me interesting articles). When I have electricity, I have a fan, which cools off my room. But usually, my room is very hot. I generally fall asleep sweating once the electricity goes off.

I’ve been eating pretty well. I have rice with every meal and my family usually provides me with two meals a day, if I do not go eat with a community member who will typically invite me at the last minute.

The interesting food I have eaten this week in baw baw. It reminds me of grits. It’s like rice, water and oil with vegetables and meat in it. You can make it spicy if you want. It’s delicious.

I found good internet, but the connection is not that great today. I was not able to upload new pictures, but here is what a Cambodian barbershop looks like from training:

From PC Training

The haircuts cost about 50 cents and are amazing. Here is their diverse set of tools:

From PC Training

Everything has been pretty good since I’ve departed from site. I’ve been here for two weeks now.

The day I arrived, I took a taxi from Phnom Penh with four other people from my province and got off at the market shop where my family works. I wasn’t expecting to be nervous, considering I had been to my site already and knew my family, but there was definitely a shock of “wow, this is real:” the only American in a foreign, developing country. It’s funny that that is the experience I’ve wanted for a while, yet it’s weird when it finally comes. My friends in the taxi were feeling it too. As a result, I basically forgot most of my Khmer for my first afternoon at site.

The next day, I went to school and met with the school director and started to meet some of my fellow teachers. I also worked with Sopheap, one of my co-teachers and my Khmer tutor, on the speech I would have to give on Thursday for the school-opening ceremony. Oh, and the speech would be in Khmer in front of about 1500 people. No big deal.

Skipping to Thursday, the ceremony was pretty cool. The school director and district governor talked about the importance of education and gave me praise for helping. My speech was nothing glorious. I had to laugh in the middle of it because I would make mistakes and the students would giggle. The speech consisted of me thanking all the important people there, introducing myself, saying what I will be doing, apologizing for being bad at Khmer but saying that I will learn, then thanking all the important people again. Respect is very important in Cambodian culture.

Everyone thought I did a good job considering I’ve only been speaking Khmer for two months and everyone was happy to have a foreigner at their school trying to learn their language. Cambodia is basically the opposite of America with respect to xenophobia. If someone who could barely speak English gave the speech I gave in America, they would be ridiculed (or in all likelihood not asked to give a speech at all). In Cambodia, I was great.

I’ve been taking advantage of the fact that Cambodians like foreigners so much. I’ve been walking around my village, meeting people. They are always happy to talk to me. It’s also a great way to get some exercise (which Cambodians think is hilarious) learn about my community and practice Khmer. A frequent conversation topic is if I am married and why I will not get married while I am in Cambodia.

In the days leading up to the school opening ceremony, I spent my mornings at the health center. I got really lucky because the second day I was there the village health volunteers had a meeting and I joined them and now I can go to their meetings. The village health volunteers are an important resource for me. They are the people in the community that are turned to with questions about health. They also do outreach activities, like encouraging parents to take their new-born children to the doctor frequently. Some of their projects are supported by NGOs. Many of the village health volunteers are very nice; I had lunch at one of their houses over the weekend. I hope I can contribute to their activities and they can help me with future projects.

I also started classes this week. I will be teaching grade 10 and working with three teachers. This past week and next week, I’ve been observing classes to see how I will be able to help the teachers improve, learn from them and reach the students. When I get settled into teaching, I will go into more details about what the Cambodian education system is like.

Interesting food of the week: Prohap. It’s basically stinky fish goo. I’ve had maybe one bite. My family eats it every single day and it’s disgusting. They think it’s funny that I don’t like it. A funny thing about the Cambodian language is instead of saying I don’t like prohap, what my family says to me translates into English as I don’t know how to eat it. I would also like to remind everyone that I eat rice with every single meal, totaling 5-7 bowls a day. I’ve loved the western food people have sent me, but if someone could mail me ice cream and a pizza that would be great.

That’s all for now. Next time I post (hopefully within the next week), I will probably describe a typical day and go into more detail about how rugged I really have it. The fact that my family has a washing machine is a big deal. I also may have a good internet situation, but I'm still figuring it out.