Saturday, January 23, 2010

Some New Photos

Here are a few more pictures. There’s a lot here, so please ask me questions.

The second public speaking workshop went quite well. The students learned how to write a speech and watched Obama and MLK. We explained the significance and profound impact of MLK and had the students work in groups to make and present their own speeches about their dreams.

Here’s a student introducing himself to the group:

From public speaking 1-21-10


Here are some of the students working in groups to make the dream speeches:

From public speaking 1-21-10


On Sunday, I joined a march with students and teachers, organized by a local NGO. The purpose was to encourage parents to keep their children in school. Girls are sometimes pulled out of school earlier than boys, so we also tried to promote keeping girls in school as long as boys. Taking on these issues presents a variety of daunting challenges, but the march itself was inspiring and fun. The march was 6km and many of the Khmer people were very tired after. I took some pictures of the march and some pictures of the scenery.

From 1-17-10 mostly march


From 1-17-10 mostly march


From 1-17-10 mostly march


After the march, there were some light refreshments. This is me racing one of my students to eat a banana.

From 1-17-10 mostly march



I got pretty competitive and then thought I won, but I think he beat me by a second.

From 1-17-10 mostly march



On the way to the walk, I took some pictures of my neighborhood.

This is the road by my house.

From 1-17-10 mostly march


This is the shop my host family owns and works at. The left is a pharmacy. The right has a clothing shop and a place to exchange money (dollars, Khmer currency and Vietnamese currency since we are close to the border)

From 1-17-10 mostly march


These are some of my neighbors who I chat with a lot.

From 1-17-10 mostly march


(Khmer people usually don’t smile for pictures)

From 1-17-10 mostly march


From 1-17-10 mostly march


From 1-17-10 mostly march

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Public Speaking

This past week, I hosted my first successful workshop that I can take some ownership of. I think I’ve contributed to some cool workshops and community groups, but this was certainly the largest project that I helped plan and implement. A Cambodian teacher, Sam On, and I had a class about public speaking for students. It was three hours long and 64 students came.

Public speaking is particularly important here because few Cambodians know how to do it properly. In class, it is customary for students to stand up when they give answers. Most students either lean on the desk while they are standing or speak too softly. And many students lack confidence or are too shy to even speak up in class, even when they know the right answer. Not speaking up is partially cultural, due to the fear of losing face from not knowing the right answer, but it also a skill that can be developed.

Our lesson focused on how to speak in public and how to be less nervous. We played games, then I gave a bad speech and Sam On gave a good speech. We asked students to compare the differences. Then, we gave them some tips and they watched speeches in Khmer and English on my laptop and then some students came up to try to emulate the speakers. We had some speeches written, but some students made up their own.

I actually saw an improvement in the students by the end of the workshop. Instant gratification is rare as a Peace Corps Volunteer, so I felt pretty good afterward. We were planning on doing a leadership workshop next week, but the students enjoyed public speaking so much that we are going to do it again.

Here are some pictures from the event:

From for blog


This one is of my students at the workshop. The students in the front row are regulars during my free extra classes. Notice how one student has his hand resting on his friend’s inner thigh. It’s pretty typical for friends of the same sex to touch each others’ leg or even hold hands. Opposite sexes rarely touch in public, especially if they are not married.

From for blog


This is Sam On speaking to the students.

From for blog


This is a student giving a speech. Behind her is the world map, which was a project done by the Peace Corps Volunteer who lived in my district before me (I’m the second one). While I was waiting for the workshop to begin, I asked the students in Khmer where a few countries were. They were all able to find Cambodia, but struggled to find the US and other countries. They were surprised by how big China was and how small South Korea was (a lot of the music they like is from Korea). Clearly, there is still a lot of work to be done with education in Cambodia.

The workshop was in Khmer. I could do some of it in Khmer by myself, and when I could not, Sam On translated for me. My Khmer is coming along nicely. I can hold a pretty long conversation. For example, the other day I stopped at the tailor’s on the way to lunch. He fixed my shirt in about a minute, but then we ended up talking for about 20 minutes and I was late for lunch. He actually mentioned America deploying 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan and I understood him, but I’m not yet at the level of commenting or anything. All I could say was that I didn’t want to join the army and I was able to ask him if he was ever a soldier. Many Khmer people were soldiers when times were less peaceful, but he was not one.

One nice thing about learning Khmer is that few foreigners speak it, so Khmer people in the provinces are very happy when I can speak it. So, they give me a lot of positive reinforcement. I am constantly told that I speak Khmer “a lot” and I speak Khmer “clearly.” Or, they turn to their friend to discuss how I know Khmer. The other day at the market in the provincial town, where people are slightly less friendly than in my town, a bunch of sellers came over to talk to me once they found out I spoke Khmer. Oddly enough, sometimes I have conversations about how I don’t speak Khmer, even though the conversation is in Khmer.

Learning the language can also be frustrating. The down-side of few foreigners speaking Khmer it is that many people, especially older people, are not used to hearing it with a non-Khmer accent and find it difficult to understand. And, naturally, there are so many words, phrases and structures I still don’t know.

As for an interesting food and a cross-cultural experience:

An interesting food I’ve eaten lately is goy-tio chah. It’s basically fried noodles, vegetables and peanuts, but you have it with bon chio. As I mentioned in another post, bon chio is the omelet-like pancake. Together, goy-tio chah and bon chio are a delicious $.50 breakfast.

A funny cultural exchange occurred when a co-teacher of mine told me that I got fatter in Cambodia. I was a little taken aback, but he said it was a compliment. Most Khmer people are very thin, so perhaps being fat is a sign of wealth. I don’t really know my weight because none of the scales are accurate, but most of my male American friends have lost weight here. You be the judge:

From for blog


Cambodian people also love white skin. They always say how pretty my light skin is and even use creams that are supposed to whiten their skin (although I doubt they work). They also try to stay out of the sun. I think they view people with lighter skin as people who are not out in the sun farming. If someone does not need to harvest rice, it’s probably because they are wealthier. When I try to tell people that in American we want dark skin and think it's beautiful, Khmer people are usually blown away. So basically, it’s cool to be a fat white guy in Cambodia.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Happy New Year everyone. It is crazy that it's 2010, which will be my first full calendar year without being in America at all.

Sorry for going so long without writing. I had a virus and my computer had a virus. So, it was hard for me to write blog posts at home. But now, I'm on the Peace Corps office computer in Phnom Penh. I'll talk about a few interesting things I've done lately and then I'll talk a little about culture.

I came into Phnom Penh for Christmas weekend and then I came again for New Year's. Normally, I try not to leave my village that much because I try to fit in and not come off as the "rich foreigner who leaves all the time." But, I made a special exception for the holidays.

Getting here is always an adventure. I catch a van on the side of the road and it costs $2.50 to get to Phnom Penh. Sometimes I have to bargain because the driver views foreigners as ATMs, but I always get it down to 2.50 which is what Khmer people pay.

Phnom Penh is not far from my village. It's only 150k, but nonetheless it takes a very long time to get there. It usually takes about 3-4 hours. The van stops constantly while they stuff as many people in there as they can. It's hard to describe the van, but an example of a car will illustrate how Khmer people like to travel. Sometimes we take a car which is a little more expensive, but is faster and has air conditioning. A 4-door sedan can have up to eight people in it, including two in the driver's seat!

The van also stops constantly along this journey and does not only carry people. I've seen them fill up with bags of rice, motos, wedding clothes and mail. Cambodia has no mail system; people just give packages or envelopes to drivers to take out to the provinces. The driver then calls the recipient and finds them. Peace Corps sends us mail this way. And, in typical Cambodia fashion, the driver calls you when he's five minutes away and expects you to be awaiting the package with no prior notice.

The trip to Phnom Penh also includes a ferry ride across the Mekong. There was supposed to be a bridge built there a few years ago, but between protest from the ferry company and the government just not getting around to it, it has not been built yet. Taking the ferry usually takes about an hour. While we wait, sellers try to sell us things ranging from bugs, to turtles to mangoes to fake sunglasses.

Phnom Penh has been a series of errands, relaxing, catching up with other volunteers and eating everything but Khmer food. Nothing that eventful happened, but the New Years countdown began at 12:02 at the place we were at. No surprise there.

Back in my village, I've been doing some interesting projects outside of my school. One is working with a savings group. It's led by an English teacher at my school and he was trained a bit by Oxfam. Basically, families get together and save money to finance other members in the group. The people who borrow pay interest, but not much. The people who are in the group don't have access to banks, so this is a way to encourage them to save and and earn interest on their savings.

Like other developing world microfinance programs, the repayment rate is extremely high. One reason for this is the communal dimension of the group. In addition to filling out paperwork (or being helped with paperwork if they cannot read), the group shares their experiences and the leader teaches them things. At the last meeting, he taught them about the differences in behavior between rich people and poor people. I'm going to help him so he can teach them about health and personal finance.

The savings group project really excites me and is something I was really hoping to do when I came here.

The teacher who leads the savings group also invited me to a conference about alcohol and health. Some university students from Singapore came to Cambodia to teach youth(mostly people age 18-25) about alcohol and health. It was a great grassroots project. It was three days, and they put us in a hotel and did a lot of lessons, skits and games. The Cambodians got to learn about the Singaporeans and it was exciting to see the Cambodians present their findings in a community fair we had at the end of the conference.

The conference is important because there is almost no awareness about alcohol in Cambodia. As I mentioned, there are pretty much no laws about alcohol here. Anyone can buy it and the drinking and driving rules are almost never enforced. Very few people realize the health concerns and people drink to get drunk. There is a saying in Cambodia that basically translates to: drink for drunk, if not drunk, why drink?

In addition to the social benefit of the conference, I made lots of friends who might want to work on alcohol projects in the future. I also now have friends in Singapore for when I visit there. It sounds like a cool place.

Some interesting cultural experiences: Khmer people do not yell when they are mad because that is seen as not being in control, which is losing face. But, they do yell when they speak to each other and many people seem to have no perception of volume. I think this is because they are traditionally farmers, so they needed to yell across large areas. Now, when they are in closed areas, they behave the same.

The other day a woman wearing two layers of pajamas even though it's hot(I will discuss style in the future accompanied by pictures, but wearing long sleeved pajamas around is normal for women), screamed at me for about 10 minutes that I should want a Khmer wife. She wasn't trying to be rude, that's just the way it is here. I'm probably asked if I want a Khmer wife about five times a day and then firmly told I should want one. It's usually the second or third thing someone I meet will say to me.

Usually, the question following whether I want a Khmer wife or not is what my salary is. Things are certaintly different here, but I'm enjoying it.