Late afternoon ramblings

As I walk among my students for their first class of the day I can't help but notice the wide array of scents from their fresh showers and aggregated perfumes and colognes, their clothes still fresh from laundering, not yet besmirched by the shenanigans they get themselves into throughout the day from slapping and throwing things at each other to farm class and biking to and from school. Thinking of these scents, some blasting me with what can only remind me of my own terrible experimentation with exhuding cool, corporate America approved colognes  and expunging my natural puberty as I was growing up in middle and high school. Somethings don't change across continents and cultures. Or maybe I'm just being a jaded adult discriminating against Cambodian olfactic culture!
The holidays come and go and I'm left with little reminders that make me giddy or cringe for example the wound on my forehead thanks to a low hanging roof, beer, and my trying not to step on a man washing a fresh blob of meat. The scab is disappearing and was never bad really but I still wore a bandaid to school that week -- half social experiment, half scared of getting a gnarly scar. “IM NOT READY TO BE HARRY POTTER!” I shouted on the phone to another volunteer who had to coach me out of feeling ridiculous and into going back to the party with the biggest bandaid I had slapped right on my forehead. I just answered, “kpueh peik” (I'm too tall) to anyone who asked. They still invited me to go to the clubs. I declined pointing not to my bandaid but to my body saying “hot nah” (so tired!).
I teach 5 classes with 3 teachers with around 250 students. All are cuties and a lot of them try really hard so it makes my job easier as I try to negotiate working in the classroom with other experienced teachers, navigating language barriers and flat affects whenever I ask if they understand. It's difficult working in a culture that doesn't value asking questions or being dynamic. “Twe akrak kho prepiynih” -- do bad, break tradition. A phrase that doesn't have much wiggle room especially if you're a woman. But it's not that bad--gender roles need to be seen through a cultural lens, and while its difficult to joke about and see how men get away with everything and anything, tradition has seen this country survive the 20th century full of colonialism, fragmentation of the country, uninvited bombing campaigns (by the good ole USA), genocide, occupation and now a fresh start coming into the 21st century surrounded by countries well into their development while Cambodia catches up slowly but surely, the population booming and campaigns here and there promoting safety and health and constant interest in education reform both campaigns aided by us lovely (and crazy) Peace Corps Volunteers.
We do a lot of work for sure, not only physically, but mentally as well, negotiating language and gossip, trying to show we care so much but we need time to ourselves to reflect and recharge. It's a 24-hour job and it's hard to explain to people why we left our family or why it's still hard because most of the people we serve have never done anything remotely close to this.
It's interesting to talk about differences between us. Yes, America has thieves and poor people but we also have much more money. Yes we have short people, tall people, Asians, Europeans, Cambodians, Mexicans, Africans, etc and just because someone was born in Vietnam, doesn't mean that individual isn't American. Just because that person is black, doesn't mean that individual isn't American. The diaspora is difficult to explain to a country that participated/s heavily in that citizens come and go to various other countries, some for labor some for life, and the people that migrate here are demonized as illegal or seen as temporary NGO workers. Also difficult to explain that the movie we're watching albeit American isn't a whole view of America. Even when the next three movies they see will feature similar faces and skin colors and materialism. It's hard when they think my beauty standards are white and blonde and blue eyed or if I'm like the other foreigners who come to look for ‘dark women' in Cambodia. And then I have to try to explain why they do that. “They like this and you like that. Just different. Yol ot? Do you understand?”
It's hard to tell people to love their skin and stop putting harmful chemicals on it to match up to their own standards of beauty, surely legacies of colonialism and international mass media that shows white is valid and being dark or black is a joke (a Korean comedy featuring a woman in blackface literally named ‘Black’ is dubbed and very popular here) or a medical condition to be cured by various skin products promised to deliver you to ‘sah saat’ (white is beautiful).
It's fun to play with children and let them mock you and you mock back all joking because as hard as it is to ignore somethings they don't mean it. The things we think are rude are just, how can I say, ‘tehehe’ moments. That was supposed to be a child's giggle.
I know I speak funny, but I'm trying. I know you speak funny, but you're trying. We try hard together to understand each other because that's what people do and that's what kindred spirits long for. So we get embarrassed and we stumble and we say dumb things but we fill the gaps with what we can say; to let you know I'm here and you let me know you're there.
We dance because we're happy and I dance like you because I love it and I want you to dance with me. I show you American moves because it's funny and I want you to know dancing can be silly and if someone laughs,  maybe we did our job. You tell me I'm good at dancing and I smile because you were right next to me.
You call me skinny then you call me fat, either way you want me to eat more rice. I eat more.
We negotiate and renegotiate because we're stubborn and unsure of what we're saying but we get to where we need to go, and we can say goodbye and still smile. I can't apologize for the state of the economy that my country and countries like mine are partially/maybe mostly responsible for, but I volunteer here to show you I want to help your children express themselves on a world stage and tell whomever maybe listening that they will be in charge someday.
Some late afternoon ramblings as I think about my time here and going into the international new year which is simply a one day holiday here, nothing compared to the week long extravaganza that is the Khmer new year in April.

Here's to....

I have been at site for two weeks, and after training, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. I have been through a lot and a little in two weeks, two weeks that feels like two months. I decided I didn't want to write a big block piece that took up a lot of time for me to piece together in a logical way, so I wrote a sort of ode to my first two weeks here in my lovely town. It is super stream of consciousness just floating bits and pieces that my memory kicked up while writing. It's beautiful and ugly, good and not so good, but it's real and it's mine and I'm in a good place. Thanks for following me, it feels warm and fuzzy to send snippets of my life, snippets of something bizarre and crazy, but also not at all--this is just one reality of many, it just happens to be put through my brain and my lens. So enjoy

Here’s to….

Here’s to the jingle jangle of music drifting from the Wat to my house, flailing like a fish to remind us we’re in the thick of a holiday

Here’s to some of my students who live there, who tell me in great English how their families couldn’t afford to house them anymore

Here’s to when I visited for said holiday and did most things mostly okay, but many things majorly wrong

Here’s to the plethora of comments about how I cross and fold my legs, always getting more attention than what they’re attached to (me)

Here’s to the monks that snickered slightly when I showed up to a ceremony, sitting almost in the front row, taking up easily three spots with not only my largeness but also my awkwardness

Here’s to the perfumed water I was drenched in, hoping everyday its blessings kick in

Here’s to the confusion and acceptance that greets me everyday

Here’s to the girl who welcomed me to her family’s restaurant with a selfie

Here’s to the guy at another restaurant who smiles at me and we do a sort of like head-nod, thumbs up, unspoken charade to express, “you know, not bad!” as if we’re old strangers saying hi to each other from across a Village Inn

Here’s to him also speaking plenty of English, but it’s intimidating speaking a foreign language!

Here’s to my host family saying his food is unhygienic

Here’s to the market full of a number of things I can’t fathom, that hide in the depths of the piles of the things and things and things

Here’s to the dust that kicks up easily from the national highway that cuts through town

Here’s to that road I biked 10km on to the big city and back

Here’s to the terror I feel when crossing it that never dissipates

Here’s to my bike that makes life easier

Here’s to my high school and the rice paddies and cows that take utility to a new level

Here’s to the teachers I’ve met that have been nothing but nice

Here’s to the two Peace Corps murals already painted on two walls, two maps

Here’s to the pregnant woman who lives and has a shop on the corner with her husband, I adore them

Here’s to the other family across the street who always has a shop, I adore them too

Here’s to the grandmother up the street who greeted me my first day with perfect English, “where are you from?” and how she teaches me khmer while I refresh her memory with English, and how we talk about our lives and how when she was 20 her French teacher at the university paid her way to France and how he asked her parents to get married and they said no, and how I wonder where she would be now, what she would be doing

Here’s to my favorite wifi café

Here’s to the families that run both the café and the barbershop next door

Here’s to them being genuine people who take care of me and talk to me and teach me and are genuinely happy to see me

Here’s to the people asking me if I drink beer

Here’s to my excuse, “I can’t I take medicine, my stomach will hurt!”

Here’s to rice

Here’s to keeping in touch

Here’s to forgetting what I’m doing

Here’s to diarrhea

Here’s to the days that drip away, similarly to diarrhea, when you’re suffering from, well, diarrhea

Here’s to a community effort to help you get better and figure out what caused it

Here’s to never knowing what or why, but it doesn’t matter

Here’s to being around a bunch of people who have their own lives

Here’s to sitting around them not understanding a word, and them not really talking to you

Here’s to when they do talk and you don’t understand

Here’s to when you do understand

Here’s to the patience and impatience

Here’s to speaking something detailed and great, eliciting a genuine awe

Here’s to speaking the same thing the next day, but it comes out like sand, clumsy and ugly

Here’s to another moment of fluidity that keeps you motivated

Here’s to learning a beautiful language that you never ever ever ever thought you would

Here’s to Cambodia

Here’s to my house where I live

Here’s to the mattress my family showed off to me

Here’s to me totally digging that

Here’s to my little brothers, twins, 16

Here’s to my little sister, cutie, 5

Here’s to my older brother-father, 30

Here’s to my older sister-mother, 34

Here’s to us for the next two years

Here’s to us building something we’re all experimenting with

Here’s to me, 24, volunteer, and those moments of SOMETHING you have when you’re half-naked, surrounded by palm trees, sweating, hanging up clothes you hand-washed to dry, looking up, looking down, realizing you’re in the thick of things, darling, and no one can take it away.

Happyish Mediumish

Blog 9/3

It's so weird feeling bouts of time differently yet simultaneously. I've been here for 6 weeks now and while that's not that long comparatively, it feels like forever. But it also feels like I just arrived. 

Sometimes I forget where I am and accept my reality as a blanket truth, that I've grown into this community like some random tweak of the universe and it just makes sense. Other times I'm confused. I wonder where I am and ask myself the question: "what am I doing?" But training is a condensed, concentrated syrup of peace corps service that we mix here and there with water and take a gulp. We'll see what becomes 'normal' when I'm at my permanent site and Khmer flops out of my mouth more like a stream than a sprinkler. (2 more weeks until I found out!)

We started our practicum this week which entails three hours a day of teaching and co-teaching with other volunteers and Cambodian educators. Here we are really getting a feel for planning lessons from the state-issued education books called 'English for Cambodia', a very interesting book. One of the lessons includes a story about a grandmother who one decides she's bored and takes her grandson's plastic gun to rob a bank. This is for 9th graders. Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction, or at least stranger than Cambodian educational materials. 

I am teaching 9th grade with two other volunteers and it's really awesome. Everyday we chip away at the giant block of shyness and get to see these kids as intelligent personalities and not unlucky pawns in our teacher training adventures. The kids manage to be both angsty and respectful at the same time and it's really quite extraordinary compared to what I remember observing when I was 14. 

Language is getting better. I wish I knew more faster, but that's not how it goes and if it did it probably wouldn't be as entertaining. My favorite lesson this week was about Cambodian superstitions involving such atrocities as the Ahp: a floating severed head of a woman with the internal organs attached in whatever way fate decided to birth such a thing. Another favorite is the Prite: a giant, forever starving zombie that lumbers around looking for food. Sound familiar? I think it was foretold I would live here one day. 

My favorite thing to do in language is to write short stories and dialogues. The most popular dialogue starring me as a Singaporean pirate (half British and half Chinese) who continuously does business with Khmer peoples circa 1533. In the first dialogue I purchased a big monkey. In the second, three parrots. Wonderful stories!! My teacher loves them.... I think. 

Tensions amongst the group are higher than average for us I think. Long bike rides, actually teaching, planning for the language test, heat, rain, mud, and mostly stress about moving to permanent site are all muddled up with tiny victories and American candy to create this  purgatory of highs and lows that is just so bizarre. Think of being comfortable and not at the same time. Take a bucket shower and lay down for a minute: the cure-all.

This past weekend we went to Tuol Sleng and Cheoung Ek, the Cambodian museum of genocidal crimes and what are notoriously known as the killing fields. If you know little about the Khmer Rouge, read a little more. I have come to realize how much was skirted over in my education growing up and yet learning now just how devastating an era it was. The Khmer Rouge essentially performed an experiment so perverse my head reels at the thought. Tuol Sleng was a high school that was converted into a prison focus on gathering intelligence through torture. Cheoung Ek was an ethnic Chinese ceremonial/funeral area that was converted into inevitable death and mass graves for those unlucky enough to cross the Khmer Rouge. Tuol Sleng still has blood stains and Cheoung Ek has remnants of clothing crawling out of the soil; almost begging for their story to be told. It's amazing to hear the stories and read the history and still interact with survivors of the regime that never fail to shine a smile your way. It's heartbreaking. It's beautiful. It's the Cambodian reality. 

Next week is the last week of practicum and our kiddies will graduate with a cool certificate. I'm happy to be here and I feel accepted. I feel loved. I feel appreciated. And I feel all those things outward as well. Especially my host family who are beautiful souls who let me talk in weird voices and scream out random things. And I love forcing my younger siblings to hug me while I tell them I love them after we make fun of each other. 

Now, as I am up way too late (10:30) just thinking about tomorrow and listening to my host dads radio station trickle in my window, while I watch a lightning bug whirl around my room confused and frustrated, while I most importantly always wait for the slightest breeze to roll in, I try to reflect on my experience. It's random and it's wild and it makes no sense sometimes and sometimes it's weird how close I am to my family and other times the market lady seems to just get me and other times I can't say what I want to say and other times I'm giggling with random 13 year olds and telling old men that I speak a little Khmer but I'm excited to be here I can't find my medium and I don't think I want to! 

More rambling for another time,

Bong John

Fried Eggs

“Fried duck eggs smell just like chicken eggs,” I thought in the shower, smelling my host mother’s cooking through the gap left where the wall separating the kitchen and the bathroom didn’t need to reach the roof. This was my first conscious uncanny experience where, for a brief moment, I thought I was back in the United States, frying eggs some random morning (read: afternoon). The smell was homely and relaxing, even while I stood naked with cold water soothing, and simultaneously stinging, my sweaty skin and with silent, malicious mosquitoes gunning for my bare skin (read: booty). I leave the shower and casually a slip a “chñañ,” which means delicious in Khmer (read: kuh-my), as I waft the smoky wisps of saturated fats towards my nose—always forgetting the word for smell. She laughs at my pale half-naked body as I waddle to my room, constantly afraid of slipping on their tiled floors. My room has three windows and a door, all of which are never covered. The windows mostly always open with decorative iron bars. The door is actually a pane of glass on top of equally decorative iron bars. I live in a cage, and I don’t mind at all. My host siblings take turns peaking in at me in the morning wondering why I’m not doing something productive at 6 in the morning. But after four weeks, I think they know enough of my personality to understand why I like to casually lay in my bed till seven, using the 3G connection on my phone’s local SIM card—thinking to myself that JFK is definitely rolling in his grave.

            Monday through Saturday generally follows the same 8am to 5:30pm schedule: class, lunch, more class. Our classes consist mostly of studying Khmer and learning how to teach English as a foreign language, betwixt classes about parasites, road safety, Cambodian Buddhism, etc and etc. The classes and topics are relentless but every bit helps to prepare for a 2-year service in a place with which most of the volunteers have little to no experience. But these are just classrooms and we are just skimming the top. Our personal vision of Cambodia will be shaped by our own interactions and experiences, which for me have already been so diverse and beautiful I am giddy and sometimes so despotic I lay in bed reeling.

            The rice here is as abundant as the people are friendly. That is a serious compliment. I usually eat rice here three times a day, many times with second helpings. A common greeting here is, “ñam bai haoi ri niuh?” which means “have you eaten rice yet?” The conversation usually then goes, “Are you married yet?” and “How much do you weigh?” It’s never malicious, but can be a little bit of poking fun. As much as they laugh at my pronunciation, I make up for it by mocking their tone of voice or just constantly calling everyone “ch’koo-uht” (crazy). Both usually elicit great reactions…when I’m not being the only “ch’koo-uht.”

            When I first went “dauh leng”-ing (going for a walk), and even now, any strangers’ face goes from this blatant stare of curiosity to the warmest smile as soon as I say “jumriepsuah” (formal hello). Sometimes it becomes a social experiment: I sort of measure how long the stare will last before I say hello and break the mutual stare of confusion and awe. It’s weird, but it’s me.

After four weeks in-country and after every last ounce of PBR has been squeezed from my pores into my sopping undershirt, I am feeling good. It’s a vague term, I know, but it’s just a general well-being that is almost inexplicable in its ambiguity which is sometimes how every day and almost every hour can feel. The pressure of learning a completely foreign language mixed with clashing personalities and residing in a strange setting with strange people is objectively insane. Uprooting my life to move across the world is a concept that is poorly understood here. “Why would you want to leave your family?” “Why would you want to come here from AMERICA?” I have yet to encounter these questions and I’m not sure of a good answer—if there is one.

            I am here because I want to give some of the good I think that I have in me. I’m sure this good can manifest in many different forms under many different circumstances, but I’m still unsure of how and when and where. It’s strange to think back to what I thought of the Peace Corps before joining and to what I think now. I think after four weeks I’m not really qualified to have a strong opinion, but as to what I am feeling now, it is acknowledging this is more than just personal growth and development: it’s a commitment to something bigger. Equally vague, the word ‘bigger’ encapsulates a vision--a sort of abstraction--to which we all, I think, contribute in myriad weird ways.

            Today we are doing our first biggish community project. We listened to our community and within the realms of our capability with limited time and resources, we pulled together a few things to give back to the community that has given so much to us as complete strangers. My group has decided to paint a banner! It will be an outline of Angkor Wat compiled of many different hand prints. I’m excited to see what happens, but, like most things go, it will definitely be a surprise.

Stay tuned and stay cool,

Bong John