The Past 2 Weeks

Hello All!

Sorry for the over 2 weeks of silence. It’s been quite busy now that we are at the tail-end of training. In less than a week, I will be sworn in as a real Peace Corps Volunteer and I couldn’t be more ecstatic about it! Right from swear-in, we go to our sites. I can’t believe it’s actually happening.

So what have I been doing for the last two weeks? Well, I’ll start from this week and then work backwards.

This week was a really important week because, in our language groups, we were given a village within our commune in which we had to do an assessment of some sort, and from those results, plan an activity. Our assessment was on Monday, and I think it went really well, especially since we had to do the entire thing in Khmer. We did something called “appreciative inquiry,” which is when you ask positively-spun questions in order to get people to think positively, and from that, we led into “priority ranking,” which is an assessment method that plays out exactly like the title sounds: people rank their priorities, and whichever comes out most important is what we would then proceed to work on. While the people who came to the assessment know about the overall food groups, they chose to rank “Vitamins within Foods” as their top need.

From that information, we set up a time to work with our Village Counterpart, and started the planning process. We had done the assessment without one of our members because she had gotten really ill, but as we were planning, she was getting better, so we decided to have 4 stations for the people to go around to: 1 kids station & 3 stations having to do with nutrition. Those “adult” stations were the cooking and cleaning of vegetables to keep the most nutrients in (my station), the actual vitamins within the vegetables, and what the vitamins do for the body. Our activity was yesterday and I think we did really well. We had six people and 11 children show up, despite the downpour that came through within the first 20 minutes of our activity.

The women who came to the session were really awesome in that they gave us feedback after our activity was over, since they were waiting for the rain to pass before they left. They said my Khmer pronunciation has gotten better since Monday. I’m really glad they said that since that’s been one of my biggest issues with the language so far.

So that’s what we did this week. To start off the week, though, we had a wonderfully relaxing morning at a nearby lake, and then climbed almost 400 stairs on our way to the top of a mountain. This was on Sunday, and it was the perfect way to relax before our big project week.

Oh, I forgot to mention, this week, on Wednesday, we found out where each of us would be living for the next 2 years. I will be in Koh Kong province, which is apparently absolutely gorgeous. I’m so excited to begin my work!

There isn’t really much to tell from before this past week. We did some other community activities and had a lot of training and language, but other than that, not much sticks out in my mind, other than the fact that we taught a nutrition class completely in Khmer and we had a day where we had a bunch of activities for the kids in the area to learn about hand-washing. My group’s nutrition class focused on the 3 food groups and healthy vs. unhealthy food, while I was at the coloring station for the activity with the children.

All in all, I’m really excited for the coming week!

Cambodia vs. America

Breastfeeding

This is something I am really passionate about, despite not yet having had children. What I find extremely interesting about Cambodia so far are the breastfeeding commercials. There are 3 commercials that I usually see encouraging mothers to breastfeed, and they are on pretty frequently, which makes me pretty happy, as I have yet to see a breastfeeding commercial in the States. What’s most interesting though is that the style of dress in Cambodia for women living outside of the major cities (Phnom Penh & Siem Reap) is very conservative, with shoulders and knees covered at all times; however, nipples are shown on TV when the topic is breastfeeding. In the States, where women can walk around in little more than a bikini and people usually won’t say anything, if a nipple were to show up on TV, even in the context of breastfeeding, there would be outrage. Priorities, man.

Children

We tend to watch kids like a hawk in the States. Here, volunteers have seen children handling machetes, walking around alone, and even driving motos (a moto is basically a vehicle that is halfway between a motorcycle and a moped). We had an event yesterday, and we had children show up without their parents, who were working. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but it’s just something interesting and culturally different to consider.

Laundry

I’ve talked about this a little bit, but I’d like to emphasize how labor-intensive washing my clothes has become in Cambodia. It’s exactly like it was when I was in Tanzania: hand-washing and line-drying. Since I didn’t get my laundry done on Sunday, I have been getting up early each morning to do a few clothes at a time, since my laundry has piled up. In college, I could (and would) go weeks without doing laundry, and then just spend 3 hours on a weeknight catching up on laundry, which basically meant sitting in my room, reading, while waiting for the timer to tell me that the washer and/or dryer was done. I can’t do that here, 1) because I don’t have enough clothes to do that and 2) it would take probably an entire weekend to catch up on that amount of laundry, and there still wouldn’t be enough laundry line on which to hang the clothes. I like the routine I’m getting into, however, especially because it makes me get up early and it means I’m working out my arms daily.

TV

The shows that I have seen here are really unsatisfying, if that makes sense. The music videos as well. And many of the shows are Thai or Japanese with Khmer dubbing. I’ve seen a lot of music videos that have to do with arranged marriages, which is something that you see rarely (if at all) in the States. And twice now, I’ve gotten interested in a TV show, only to find out that it is actually a movie shown in half hour chunks until it’s over. The plots are sometimes strange, but I’m an outsider who picks up on less than half of what is being said, so obviously there is going to be some disconnect.

Food

Obviously, the food is going to be different. While there are less of them, there are still processed foods here, and some of the ingredients that Cambodians like to add to their foods (namely MSG) can be problematic. Other than that and the *huge* amount of rice eaten daily, the diet can be pretty good in terms of the availability of fresh fruits and veggies. However, a lot of things that we would consider “weird” in the States are eaten here. I’m going to end this post with a list of the foods that various trainees have eaten. Can you guess which ones I’ve had?

Trainees have eaten:

- Octopus

- Frog

- Ants (with the larvae)

- Fish eggs

- Duck fetus still in the egg

- Teeny-tiny shrimp (the weird part in this is that you eat ALL of it)

- Fetal pig umbilical cord

- Chicken feet

One Month in Cambodia!

This past weekend was quite eventful.

On Thursday, I started to feel under the weather, and by Friday, I had developed a cold. Luckily, it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t go on the “field trip” that Peace Corps had planned for us on Saturday.

Bright and early Saturday morning, we took a 2 hour bus ride to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. We went straight to Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21, a school that had been converted into a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime. This, however, was no ordinary detention center: people were brought in, tortured until they confessed to crimes that they didn’t commit, and then killed. Thousands of people passed through S-21 in the 3 years that it was open, but only 7 made it out alive (although more have apparently come out of the woodwork).

It was a really raw experience, because, structurally, it has been left as it was, for the most part, when it was deserted in January 1979. There was still blood on the ceiling in one room. We saw the devices that had been used to torture and kill people, and photographs of the corpses as they were found on the day that the Vietnamese discovered the prison. In some of the rooms where the Khmer Rouge had destroyed the cells before leaving, there pictures of all of the people who spent their last moments in S-21. I was handling it all pretty well (for me) until we came across a display of the clothes of those that had been killed, and there was a child’s dress. That sight hit me pretty hard. 

Sorry it's blurry. That small white thing is the dress.

After our tour, we were able to meet two of the survivors of the prison. I bought a book from each of them, and I’m looking forward to reading their stories, as hard as it will probably be. 

I didn't know whether or not to smile.

Once we were done at S-21, we drove about 15km to the Killing Fields, another incredibly raw experience. We were each given a set of headphones, so we were able to take the audio tour at our own pace, and really process what was in front of us at each stop. I saw a couple of mass graves, as well as the tree against which the Khmer Rouge soldiers would smash babies to kill them. There was a Stupa of the bones of many of those who had been buried, with layers 2-9 just filled with skulls. People of all ages were buried there.

It was a long and emotionally trying day, but it also emphasized the history we will be facing as we try to enact change in the communities in which we will be placed.

After we got back to our villages, a group of us hung out for a bit to decompress. It was fun, and a good end to a rather depressing (but important) day.

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Sunday was a great day. A bunch of us went for an early morning bike ride, turning randomly when we felt like it, and we ended up biking through these gorgeous rice paddies. We also came across a couple of pagodas as we adventured. Words won’t do this justice, so I’ll just let you see for yourself.

The group that went biking: Gianni, Andrea, Joel, Rachel, Wes, me, Nico, and Evalynn. Josie took the picture.

In the last pagoda we stopped at, we heard really loud music. Almost everyone else wanted to turn back, but I wanted to investigate, so Rachel and Joel came with me, and we ended up finding, of all things, a bunch of kids jumping on two trampolines in their front yard, where their mom had a store. Of course we all wanted to jump, so we asked, and we ended up jumping around on the trampolines with these kids (who had awesome moves) for a full hour and a half straight. It was an experience I never thought I would have while in Cambodia. I have no pictures, or I would upload them.

After that, we all biked home for lunch, and then met up at a volunteer’s house for another rousing game of volleyball. Luckily, this time, it didn’t pour. We played for over two hours and it was so much fun. After volleyball, a couple of people came over to my house to watch a movie. All in all, Sunday was an awesome day, although I didn’t get my laundry done. Oops.

Last night, I finally bought and set up a mouse trap – a glue mouse trap. Within 5 minutes of settling into bed after setting the trap last night, I heard a panicked squeaking coming from the vicinity of the trap. I quickly checked under my bed, and the mouse had gotten caught. My family was asleep by then, so I had to go the whole night listening to the mouse trying to get free. I woke up this morning, and the first thing I did was to bring the trap down to my homestay dad. I thought he would kill the mouse, but instead, he took a pair of pliers and started peeling the live mouse from the trap, killing it in the process. I kept turning away as he was doing it and my homestay mom kept laughing at my reaction.

After that wonderful morning ordeal, I did some of the laundry I had neglected to do yesterday, not realizing that a rain storm was on the way. I went to class and halfway through the morning, there was a downpour. Luckily, I returned home after class to find that my laundry had dried most of the way anyway.

All in all, my adventure seems to be becoming routine. Let me know if you want me to keep posting pictures!

Ob-Ob-Obsessed with Gangnam Style

I’m writing this at 9pm on the 7^th with hopes of uploading it on the 8^th. So, where should I start?

Well, the first thing I want to say that I keep forgetting to mention is how OBSESSED with Gangnam Style Cambodians are. I hear it almost every day… It’s on at least two commercials, and if you pass by a wedding with its usual loud music, you’ll hear a mix of traditional Khmer music and Gangnam Style. I wish I was kidding. They have Gangnam Style hats, clothes, and even cards… and I’m not talking playing cards with Psy on one side, I’m talking collectible Psy cards (if you are my age or slightly older, think about the Spice Girls lollipops that came with collectible stickers… now think about how they probably could’ve just sold us the stickers and we’d be happy… yeah, it’s like that). I mean, even this morning at the market, somebody was blasting it. This was before 8am. It’s quite the spectacle.

It’s been an eventful week. Between the mouse that just won’t go away and my iPod dying, I could say that it’s been a bad week, but that’s not actually how I feel, if that makes sense. I’m totally content and really getting into the groove of things here. On Sunday, almost all of the CHE volunteers gathered to play a rousing game of volleyball. We were having so much fun that we continued to play during a downpour. Of course, I’m the only one who hit it over the wall of the backyard that we were playing in, so I had to retrieve it, but other than that 20 minute break, we played for about 2 hours straight. Then I watched the first hour of Pitch Perfect with another volunteer. Yeah, Sunday was great.

We also had our language groups changed around this week so now I’m with Nico, Abby, Amy, and Kayla, who was in my last group. My language is definitely coming along; I can feel myself getting stronger in Khmer with each passing day, even though sometimes it feels like I can’t possibly learn anymore. Those feelings usually come in about hour 4.5 of a 6 hour language day. Blergh.

Last night, we had basically monsoon rains right as I was settling in for bed. It was so loud, and as soon as the thunder hit, I raced down the stairs to be with my family, as I was, frankly, terrified since the lights had gone out. It’s not that I can’t handle rain storms, it was just the time of day that it hit really reminded me of Hurricane Sandy, which still kind of makes me upset. Plus, it was actually really scary, and it was the hardest downpour I’ve seen yet. In the morning, we had two trees down, but my family kind of put them back up with wooden supports, new dirt, and a pile of rocks. Cambodian ingenuity!

Other than that, this is definitely my new normal, and I’m loving every single moment of it.

Before I end though, three quick stories:

1) My homestay aunt was telling my homestay mom how sohpeeup (feminine) I was eating, until I wiped my hands on my sampot (skirt), at which point she started yelling “Ut tay, Ut tay, chohp!” (No, No, stop!). She made me smell my hand, as if wiping it on my sampot would somehow make it dirty? It was funny the way it went down.

2) Small victory: Put on a pair of pants this morning that used to be tight when I was in the States, and now they are loose. Not something I normally care about, but I can feel myself getting physically stronger here, and it feels GOOD.

3) I told my family that I like spicy things, so they went out and bought hot sauce. I now eat it on *everything* because I feel bad, although I really love the sauce.

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading :-)

PS – Did I mention that my bug zapper broke? This is my worst nightmare. Especially since I currently have a cockroach flying less than 4 feet from me. Eek.