On the House, the Home, and Homesickness

They ask the differences of

the house, the home;

I say the house is what you see

And the home is what you feel

But

how intertwined they are:

the corners that make your kitchen

inextricable from

your mother’s face as she

serves her lasagna

the position of your couch as it faces

the television: the house

that is the home to the stories

that filled your brain

and

nurtured your

developing consciousness

the door isn’t a door

it’s a portal, to

the first spot you slugged off

your muddy shoes

the gap where your mother’s shouts

echoed to the outside,

blistering your ears,

meeting your mother’s whispers

telling you

it’s okay while

picking pebbles out of your bloody knees

the home meets the house in

the mundanity of

laundry detergent,

the buzz of your leaky fridge,

that stubborn doorknob

in the way your sheets could

envelop you without struggle in

your bed where you

could wake up without doubts

or confusion, save

a few lingering dreams

sifting from your brain as

your dad’s sizzling bacon

saves your senses:

snap, crackle, pop.

fat, meat, salt,

home.

they ask me

what’s a house?

they ask me

what’s a home?

what I want to tell them is that,

we say we’re homesick

so we miss what we feel

you know,

home is where the heart is--

but!

the heart can’t fill

a house like that

scruffy carpet can

or those

wood floors and that

length of hallway;

perfect for running and

sliding

in our countless socks

we withered down to

mush

I’m homesick,

I say,

and I think of

the order my mother would

flip on the light switches:

a sequence created in

a house but

found only in

our home

the way the windows

danced light off our

many hanging pictures:

static architecture and the setting sun

meeting

our dynamic design and wandering eyes

so I guess what I should say,

maybe,

is that

I can’t be homesick without

a home

and I can’t say home without

my house and

well, I, uhh…

next question

please?

Endure for the Calling

My fellow volunteer friend, Jenny, came up with the phrase I then stole to use for the title of this article because it has been something I've been stuck with since she first said it.

If you know me, you know I won't stay silent for long about something that's bothering me, much to the contrast of the passive, patient village in which I reside. So, I decided to open up and stretch my fingers and embrace the vastness of the keyboard.

The keyboard's vastness is of particular interest now especially that my beloved iphone has been whisked away to someone probably poorer than me with much less opportunity than I can even fathom being a very privileged citizen of the United States. It still pangs me to think that the bubble of my community that I've been carefully huffing and puffing into, admiring its sheen and beauty, could be popped so easily, filling me with doubt and fear amidst the static rice fields and monotonous cow moans.

I never expected to be robbed in my own school, even after regular school hours, and especially not when teaching almost 40 village children, screaming, laughing, crying, peeing their pants.... I thought my reputation preceded me and the value that I give to my community is worth more than the risk of stealing my valuables. I'm naive, I know, but that was my vision of my village: a warped mythology I've been feeding for 15 months now.

I've been in and out of the village for various reasons over the past year and change, and every time I come back it's this uncanny feeling between home and not-home, this gap I seem to bridge, but when I turn around, the bridge has disappeared or was never there to begin with. I'm left with a strange feeling of whether I actually crossed the bridge, or not--this purgatory between where am I, how did I get here and yes, I would love to go to your wedding and yes, I am interested in your whole life story, how did you know?

It's hard crossing these gaps when the bridges you use are infinite and invisible, but somehow you find your way across and you prove it, damn it, with your awkward language, tattered clothes and young scars. I made it across and you must accept me.

Although my phone is gone, the world moves on. The rice harvesting season is in full tow now and the sun still sets and the weather is cooling down as customary around the ending of my year and the middle of theirs.

There's nothing much to say but things are things and people are people and maybe this was a blessing in disguise. A chance to get away from the ease of wifi and the endless scrolls through social media feeds that simultaneously laud me with and drain from me information. The vacuum it created for me peaked during the election where I watched ignorance take control of what I thought was my country (selfishly) and became something else altogether.

I want to use this "opportunity" (see: euphemism) to get a break from the bad news and selfies and delve into films, books, crafts, art, the analog and step away from the digital. I don't want to think of it as something valuable, because it's really not. Not right now, not for me.

I don't want to remember my Peace Corps service as being surrounded by children opening their bags for me to look in and check before they go home.
"I trust my students," I told them, because I don't want to live in a world let alone a community where I have to even fathom the possibility of one of them stealing from me. I can't and I won't.

I know I'm still materialistic and this isn't my rejection of material wealth and vow to wear one pair of linen pants the rest of my life. But it is a recommitment to myself first and foremost as an active, independent, and vulnerable agent in a dynamically static enviroment and I will still cross those bridges and still look for clues to how I did it, but, I refuse to let this escape me. I answered my calling and I have chosen to endure.

Reputations

My friend, who owns and operates a cafe with her husband, dreamt of me and another frequent patron. “His was different than his body. It was the head of a cow,” she explains, “but it was him. It was his body.” I think of minotaurs and mythology. “Then you stabbed him! But he didn't bleed. Then he ran down that way, on this road,” she points west. We laugh together, the patron and I exchange glances of caution: are you a demon I am supposed to kill? Or am I the demon?

I see this as a bizarre, maybe farfetched metaphor for my place in my village, my home for over 10 months now. I wonder daily what my reputation is here and how people perceive me; standing on the brink between paranoia and ignorance. I want to know while I never want to know. A paradox?

I worry when people see me sitting for a few hours in a cafe plugged into the wifi and browsing social media, scoping out new movies, shows, books, pursuing new educational interests and Netflix. Do they think I'm a gaping doorstop?

Whenever there's a rainstorm and private classes are sort of swept away like everything else, I feel a pang I'm not there for my community like I “should be.” I think I have yet to figure out what “should be” means in my context, for my own sanity. I almost want to ask my community members when I feel a twinge of judgment: “what do you think I should be doing?”

I'm really, really all ears at this point. I want to know where my ideas meet theirs. That's the point not only of cultural exchange but also of sustainable development. What feels like yours and mine that we can strongly make “ours”?

As school ends prematurely, as often is the case in Cambodia, I want to revamp my vibe here and stretch my arms into the heart and soul of my village. The students can only know and do so much at 16 years of age versus asking a mother, an uncle, a grandmother of 10. What do they think? Where do they see their country going?

So, I open my schedule and I let the kids who want to learn, learn. I forgive them as they forgive me and we work together. I bring paint and paper, they bring hope. I bring a speaker, they bring a future. I bring nothing, they bring adaptability. I look past my worry of reputations and ‘tve la’a, ban la’a’: do good, get good. That's all we can really do, right?

Pride & Prejudice

The newest addition to my neighborhood is a mini-mansion, not so different from a house I would see stateside--the traditional Khmer house on stilts across the road instantly juxtaposed with this mammoth of modernity, cradled between rice paddies and dirt roads, gutted deep by rain and tractors. The outer gate of the house sporting a series of Buddhist wheels, circling its existence back to the Cambodian context.
The other houses and businesses in construction have nothing on this palace, but they still show progress and development, what Cambodia has craved for and needed for so many years--this country surviving through colonialism, dictatorships, genocide, conflict, war, deception. The average Cambodian sporting multiple facebooks, each one sporting a different name, a different ‘me’, allowing those able and privileged enough to afford access to the net a sort of self-development--an agency to construct their identity digitally, owning several online properties with their edited, whitened faces establishing their rule and their space.
The selfie phenomenon thriving in Cambodia. Those who partake brandishing their iPhone, worth more than gold, cradling it in their hand to take and flaunt their ‘sty,’ an abridged word for style--a linguistic quirk of Khmer the ending consonant swallowed producing subtle differences in words difficult for my foreign ears to distinguish. (bot bok bak baik bat)
The streets now lined with yellow lines, seldomly yielded, the government imposed rules in conflict with the organically established rules of the junabot, the countryside. National highwaysin production, roads being widened--both carving away at the traditional Cambodian roadside society: markets, houses, businesses, schools all trailing along the main veins of the country.
The power lines webbing across ancient rice paddies up mountains and powering cellphone and radio towers. Each year more and more villages join the masses of Cambodian society with access to stable, hopefully reasonably priced electricity. Schools are mostly still without, some houses using it so sparingly--but in my village lights, camera, action baby! I can hear a loudspeaker’s bass every night, reverberating across the village’s streets, the dogs barking at its echoes: ghosts with their electric buzzing.
I decided to call this pride and prejudice not because I've read the book but because these are all things of which Cambodians should be proud of. Their country moving somewhere else, investing in its infrastructure, creating new opportunities for its citizens. The prejudice on my part and many others--avoiding power lines in pictures opting for a more ‘natural’ view. I should be ashamed of this willful betrayal of Cambodia. Who am I to erase their work, their progress? Who are we to judge construction as a nuisance? How can we justify the profuse litter and waste as nothing but a sign of disposable income?

There's a lot to come for Cambodia and I might have gotten here at it’s sweet spot, it's transformation.

Neither here nor there, more colloquially known as
The phum and the junabot, wedged in

It’s that feeling when you wake up
Coated in a red glow, the curtains at Smiley’s making your room a darkroom
To develop strange, floating memories of a life
You still don’t understand although
You’ve been here ages.

The clench in your gut that jolts
When your taxi driver calls
Telling you he’s waiting, a sign
He is ready to chaperone you.
He’s the Charon to your Soul
Across the River Styx
To Hades.

Sorry,
I mean,
Your site.

You postpone a few hours, because it’s easy
“I’m a little sick please wait”
You muster out in your Khmer
Sounding half-baby, half-overgrown baby.

You want time to order food so you make time
You want time to shower and shave so you do
You want time to contemplate life’s existence
But you don’t
And shouldn’t
Not now, in your most vulnerable state between the city
And the junabot.

The transition between
Knowing while being unknown
To the unknown while being known
A paradox of familiarity with
The westernisms of the city
Versus the anonymity that the countless foreign bodies
Offer you here
Versus the traditions of a culture
So different (but so familiar?)
In a place where
Every sneeze is noted
And every step is counted
And every [insert literally anything] is remarked upon
The privacy of ourselves
Foregone in the sacrifices we make
In a place that is and is not
Our home.

Mildly panicking
Packing up your clothes and
Piling up to go boxes and delivery orders next to
The mountain that is
The garbage can
Swallowed by
Styrofoam
And
Plastic
And
Ants.

Are you slightly hungover?
Or is it the cheese?

Your host family calls
Or they don’t
You let them know either way
You’re on your way!
And yes, everything has been sooooo
sabay!

Food is delivered
Devoured
A shower as baptism
The air-conditioning your mother’s breath
On a spoonful of boiling Spaghetti-O’s

I would kill for some Spaghetti-O’s.

You leave saying bye to the hotel staff who has seen the best
And worst of
Almost every volunteer
Surely
To meet your tour guide to the junabot
To a life that seems like a dream amidst
The city lights
And the Burger King’s
And the
Options.

Back to a place where the steam
Of rainy season clears
Your pores of the dirt dry season caked in,
And the rice that never ends
And the children never tire of
Saying hello hello hello
Whatsyournamemynameis

The city blurs into village into construction
Into village
Into cows and two-lane highways and into
Your phum
Your home

You forget this is your home in the moments between
Quesadillas
And pizza
And life and motion and
Comforts

But this is where you belong
Remember why you left your home
Remember why you left your family
Remember where you wanted to go
Amidst papers and doctors and bureaucracy and recruiters and explanations and money and saying goodbye and saying hello and tears and fears and taking leaps
And go there

Even if it’s not what we wanted or expected
We took a chance and we
Got where we are because
We wanted something
And we got it.

Updates...and things !

“Don't go to school” my host brother says to me as I'm about to step out the door.
“Why?” I ask.
The gust of wind that follows is my cue to the rain and ensuing storm that gathered in the last 20 minutes.
“Okay so….”
I try to call my counterpart and no luck as it starts to sprinkle. Maybe I could just hop over and make an appearance and see….
“No students” he says back to me reading my mind.
30 seconds later the rain pours down the clouds hardly dark at all, my ignorance of the rainy season revealed after what seems like an infinite dry season.
I sit now, waiting for some cosmic sign. I've seen rain last for a few minutes to hours. From dusk to dawn a steady rain pounding the corrugated metal roofs and trees, putting “Stomp!” to shame--nature wins again.
I think about how long it's been since I've posted and it's amazing how much and how little has happened. I've done a lot of trainings, a fun weekend for students who placed in a peace corps art competition, celebrated some send offs, a few birthdays, helped facilitate a diversity workshop, and tried to be a good teacher at school.
It's been a whirlwind with Khmer new year thrown in there. My semester break ended up being about 7 weeks…. As opposed to the scheduled 2 weeks we were supposed to have. Unfortunately during that time the temperature got to a mean “feels like 111°F” so a lot of that time was just my brain boiling mulling over things trying to study.
Khmer new year was about 10 days of partying, dancing almost everyday, showing off to my community that I can get down on it.
My birthday was lowkey most people forgot in my village and that was okay. They're not really celebrated here. It was also sweltering hot.
I finally got to see Angkor Wat albeit for a short time with other volunteers and some students for our winners weekend. We did different workshops and learned about different aspects of art and culture and also met new friends from around the country. It was awesome and I really want to do it again next year !!!!
I went straight from there to garden training in kampot where I realized I was stricken with a 102° fever and a throat like sandpaper. I was told to go to the hospital and 4 hours later had an antibiotic prescription for strep throat. Not very exciting or fun at all. But it was fun to help develop the garden at another volunteer’s site for the rest of the training I didn't miss.
The previous cohort is finishing up their time here and I got to see some of them before they skedaddle. I'm going to miss them and their advice but I guess we're going to be the new them, the new MASTERS of peace corps Cambodia for the babies.
Helping facilitate a diversity training (with 5 other volunteers) for all the Peace Corps Cambodia staff was awesome. We learned a lot and everyone shared amazing stories. Some about difficulties in service, most about trying to understand more. I think everybody was willing to go the extra mile to listen to different perspectives and ideas for the three days I was there. We are anticipating Peace Corps Cambodia’s first same-sex couple with this upcoming batch of volunteers!
I'm just sort of glazing over smaller details, giving a bigger picture while the rain trickles down--but if you're ever curious about anything feel free to ask. I won't judge you or leave you hanging.
Now as my sister’s wedding approaches, I think about my service so far and reflect on the love I have received from and the love I can give to my community.

The -uhh- Peace Corps Experience (Part 1 of probably too many)

Maybe when you think of Peace Corps you wouldn't jump straight to my experience. I carry my iPhone around and have a faster 3G signal than I ever did in the USA, mostly because sprint kind of sucks, and I have 4GB of data for $5. I love and hate it. I can talk to anyone I want, I can translate words on the fly--but then I rely on it as a social crutch, something to fill in the gaps while I sit awkwardly waiting for uhh something to happen? The irony is that I'm less glued to my phone than most people here--smart phones quickly becoming the newest tradition amongst the seemingly endless array Cambodians are, and should be, so proud of.

Language barriers are awkward for everyone, no one necessarily likes taking time to sit down and talk to an adult like they're a baby, explaining each word slowly and clearly--it's exhausting. Whenever someone wants to practice English but it's apparent they haven't studied in probably 3 decades, I find myself grinding my teeth saying things like “Yes, Cambodia so happy. I eat Khmer food, yes” instead of rattling off in the Khmer I've spent hours learning and practicing. I want to be nice! And I have experience as such, working with refugees or talking to foreign exchange students, etc etc I believe I have perfected the nonchalant non-native English speaker conversation including appropriate body language, facial expressions, leading phrases and words, and filling in the uncomfortable gaps with a gaff here or there--laughing at a child or something strange to diffuse the tension and make sure the other person doesn't feel embarrassed or intimated----that's how my brain works.

When I finally get going, rattling off in Khmer things escalate quickly talking about money, American economics, goods, relationships--last night I bonded with family and strangers alike about my prostitution price: “500-1000$ depending on the situation,” I say to a roar of laughter. “The $500 is for my Khmer family, they get a discount,” to another wave of laughter and then subsequent invitations to “sing karaoke,” a euphemism for visiting a brothel. “No,” I say. After 6 months here it gets harder to fluff awkward situations like that that are genuinely offensive in my culture. But I do try--hiding my Aries fire demon, letting it come out only when I can't suppress it anymore.

“John, I can't understand you when you speak Khmer,” a, umm, friend always says to me. “Well everyone else can, so…” I retort. “Yeah, I don't know, it's not so clear,” he fires back. “Well, maybe you're not so smart,” I whip back--I've had this conversation so many times with him I'm tired! I walk away giggling to my inner-demons.

Like I said, not so uhh “classic” Peace Corps, eh?

The newest fad in my hood is all the students boys and girls alike have tinted their hair different colors: their black hair now maroon on top, their ponytails green, blue, yellow--disposable income at its finest: vanity. I am kind of into it though.

The ladies at the Tela Mart (the closest thing to a 7/11 within 50 miles of me) all know me, some by name, although I never gave it. I come here to sit down in some AC and eat ice cream or drink a soy milk straight from a fridge. It's nice. It's about 13Km from my site and a perfect excuse to come to a “city” and see traffic and movement and monuments. Granted this city is about the size of downtown Omaha if that, it's still quaint and cute and I really want to go on a boat ride today. Too bad I don't have any friends :( just kidding they're just all traveling while I stay in my village, working through my endless series of, I guess, insecurities not only in my job here but life as well. But it's okay, I focus on me now, and I go to Bali later!

Really it's not a big deal!

The school break has already set in, kind of a surprise to me about 2 weeks earlier than it should be, but I do live in Cambodia. My birthday and the second semester will be here before I know it, and with it a fresh start that I will definitely take advantage of. In a month, I will go to Siem Reap with TWO of my students who won 2 spots in the Art Olympics challenge where only 10 students in the country won. Amazing! I will try to get better pictures of their pieces to post.

We will go to workshops, museums, Angkor Wat, the circus, etc so I'm super excited about that. It's definitely an awesome opportunity that peace corps affords students.

One of my best students also won the top spot for his grade in the short story competition IN english! His story is about ISIS and a strange drug, but I don't have a copy of it yet. I was nervous it wasn't going to win because it's uhh kind of violent but who knows? Creativity trumps all. He will receive assorted books as a prize! He's not as excited as he wanted to go to Siem Reap. You would think in Peace Corps your students would be so happy to have even 1 new book, but PC Cambodia is a little posh corps, and the students would sometimes fit nicely in an American classroom with a umm less than grateful attitude. But I'm being probably too judgmental, but it still kind of hurts to see most people don't care he won out of ~70 students because the prize isn't as luxurious as a weekend getaway to Siem Reap. #justsaying

All in all its always an interesting time here, getting told I have no muscle, or that I'm son smart or so beautiful or so skinny or so tall or so this or so that. They do it out of love. If they didn't like me they wouldn't talk to me. And that's Cambodian culture!

I need to bike back now it's nearing 11 and I haven't really done anything today besides watch the first episode of House of Cards and read this really long story about solving a series of sexual assault cases...and biking here...and writing this. Maybe that is productive in Peace Corps terms. Regardless of what you think about the PC experience, everyone's is different even within the same province. But one thing for sure is that a lot of things don't make sense, but there's a lot of love. And mocking.

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

Nothing's that ugly except for the kind of tiny scar on my forehead from the birthday party. A constant reminder to everyone I'm tall and if I have one beer I am the drunkest boy at the party. I explain again and again I was looking down at a man washing various raw meats trying not to knock him over and doing an awkward sidestep before my head being sliced open. At least I had my tetanus shot.

Today I got the best care package ever. Everything I need at site right now that I didn't necessarily want to find in Phnom Penh, traipsing through markets for pants that would rip in a week (self-experience) or to a department store (pay $50...no thanks!). The food and seasonings and instant meals I DIE! I want to tear into it now but I'm going to participate in the family meal, dreaming about cookies the whole time.

One of my students also won for his grade level in the whole country for those who participated in Write On! the short, creative story competition. We're not sure of the prizes yet but I'm pretty sure it will be a bundle of books! I'll include his umm...interesting essay later.

Today was up and down, an awesome art club where we drew pictures out of words, turning the word into its visual representation. Pictures on facebook. This was, however, after I told the students Tuesday English club will be cancelled until the students can respect me and my free time and the schedule we agreed on. Things were tense but I'm an Aries so….

I then taught my children's class. We used to have great strides but then it's just been going downhill. Students not remembering “I am” after four classes of studying pronouns + to be exclusively. It's frustrating and I ask them why they don't study at home and ask them why they don't pay attention. It takes 40 minutes to get through 6 words and they don't listen or pay attention. I told some of the parents and asked some friends but we're just going to try again. But I'm close to calling it quits, it's not something I'm going to do just to do. I love the kids but not in a classroom context and unfortunately that's what parents want and what is best for their futures.

It's so different than what I expected. Honestly. My site is a mix between rural and urban--10k from the provincial town that just seems to be a bigger version of my town. I'm right off the national road so people could potentially work in Phnom Penh and come back everyday. It's about a 2 hour drive though. It's not so much the isolated village of houses all together with children wandering aimlessly and people hanging out together. It's a bustling market and many, many shops selling all sorts of things. When you find your friends you go somewhere to hangout like a wifi cafe or in your house which is away from the street with a gate. It's definitely more collective but still has many aspects of what I consider individualistic cultures making it a strange purgatory between tradition and modernity.

It's not uncommon for people to sit in front of a television for hours or for kids to help their parents at their shop or playing on a smartphone or sitting in private classes all day. I bike everywhere so, stopping to talk is a commitment and often people think you have somewhere to go. It's mostly true. Every so often I meet someone new and I try to develop more relationships in the neighborhood. It's not necessarily a vibe for me to just go up to everyone and talk like we're ol friends. A lot of people are busy or maybe not so friendly appearing. I don't know. I have a lot of connections and a lot of people saying everyone loves me and wants my children, but I still think about what sort of deeper connections I make with people and what that looks like from a different perspective, different from my own, and it's hard to get that from an indirect culture especially with language barriers and personal investments in each other--don't want to lose face if someone hears you saying something.

I think my community's perception of me is good, they like me, but I do wonder how much they need me or value me. I don't know what more they want/need in their community that I can help them achieve with facilitation and the occasional grant, but those things are going to come with time and patience. Right now I'm focusing on my students, almost 300 of them in my various activities. Hard to imagine having time for other projects when this one is already taking up close to 30 hours of my week. And with the students lack of motivation it seems even longer.

I really don't want to say that but at this point I see students just shut off completely and it's not 1-2 in a class it's like probably close to half of them. I don't know how to encourage them as competitiveness is kind of frowned upon but also they're teenagers. It's just hard to imagine the other communities here that don't have a volunteer but students that are craving extra classes that my community is inundated with. Students sometimes go from 6am-8pm at night with a few breaks and sometimes no lunch. It hurts to see, but that's the culture of education here.

These thoughts may be sporadic or unelaborated, but I want to get this conversation started outside of my head and outside of close circles and just see it visually and just stop to think for a second about where my service is heading.

God speed! I have trader joes snacks waiting for me :)

Leap Day

Moments here can be suddenly so intimate. A 7th grade girl tells me about her crush, another boy from English club, a 10th grader and a less frequent member. She at first wants to sit next to him, his bag left on the table while he ventures off to buy a Sting, a near-deadly energy drink. Another student complains there's no room on that side and so together we encourage her to sit across from him. “Face to face!” I tell her as I see the nervousness consume her confidence; she tells me to be quiet and settles for a diagonal seat from her Romeo, who, presumably, will have no idea of our secret game: the dynamics of adolescent romances carefully calculated, gently performed and embarrassment avoided.

My host sister asking me if I could hear the television in my room last night. No, I thought, not really, I mean I heard a little sound drifting through the rafters but I fell asleep and soundly. A dinner guest corrects her. She wants to know if you heard some sounds last night. Oh! I thought, ohhhh…. Ahh… AHHH! I said no and they snickered, I'm still unsure of the subtle nuances that were present or the real details--not sure if I want to.

“Is it true women don't wear bras until they're married?” They ask later. I laugh and say “no women wear whatever, depends on what they like.” They got this idea from movies they say.

People often make a point to really stress to me that according to Khmer tradition you only have one ‘songsaa’ (a honey, a sweetheart, a bae). They stress this to me because of a prolific belief that in American culture everyone can have many songsaas. Hollywood! I tell them no most people in America follow pretty strictly a one-one policy, foregoing an attempt to explain other facets of American sexual diversity including polyamory or asexuality. Maybe next time.

Sometimes I think the universe is just trolling me. I'm placed in a country to teach English and the word ‘essay’ translates literally to ‘itch a clitorus’ (eh say). In what cruel world would this coincidence happen? Real life is often stranger than fiction.

Other terrible things is the distinction between ‘maybe’ and ‘probably’ don't exist as suave as they do in English. Some asks me if I'm going to do something and I answer ‘prohail’ trying to squeeze out a little white lie, but it's also basically a promise. Maybe I'll go = probably I'll go. Really depends on your tone and the context. Really string it out ‘maaaaaybe I'll go’ sometimes keeps that tone of ‘please don't ask me to say no straight to your face.’

Explaining to students why ‘I am going to the the market’ is necessary even though ‘I go market’ is essentially the same thing. The superfluous and pretty much nonessential information we put in English to make it fluent is soooo hard to teach and, understandably, very difficult to understand.

Now I understand why my Portuguese teacher was so adamant about us not sounding like E.T.: yes, the grammar can be obnoxious but you want to sound fluent--especially in a world dominated by discrimination down to our inflection of vowels, our tone and our syntax policed more than our meaning and input in some sort of sick paradoxical human nature hell hole only the devil would birth. Not to sound bitter though, you know?

Nothing can really prepare you fully for every experience. After training, I send my love back to the village: “see you soon!” I say. One of my best friends here, my language and cultural tutor, says he's in the big city also. I pause. He never gets to leave the area, his family being extremely poor. I ask why and a whole saga unfolds involving a huge responsibility for a quaint soul. He must leave the village he says, to find work, work that pays more to support his sick father. He found a job, he says, and is doing the training now! Excellent I think, until I learn the training is unpaid and ultimately results in a job selling nutritional supplements, in some sort of pyramid scheme I have no choice but to wince at. He's 20. He has no money. And he's trying to become a man for his family. My heart breaks every time I think about him, especially the times I find myself free, remembering we would study together outside the pagoda, under the trees, the easy breeze, the monks gawking, the children curious, the birds howling, the rice fields waiting, the motos purring, us learning.

I hate roosters. They don’t specify only the rising sun as a sign to cry, but almost anything invokes the scream, at any hour of any day. I once had a dream a rooster explained to me the yell was an unstoppable sudden impulse, a reflex, an unwarranted eruption of the body. They betray themselves with each shriek, like a hiccup for a human, the action completed before the mind can resist. I still can't forgive the poor creatures, but I pity them. Evolution has brought them from the biggest and mightiest of the beasts that ruled the earth to mindless strutting feathered flyless drones constantly pecking at any and all things to eat. Their bodies curbed from a Darwinian route to a culinary existence. I throw things at them sometimes. Sorry!

Pangs of nostalgia awash my brain and even seep into my dreams, perhaps they are born from some sort of unconscious reflex triggered by a lack of familiarity and mild discomfort betwixt a clumsy confrontation with a professional occupation (clumsy in that its success is resting squarely on my shoulders, unfortunately invisible and shifty, manifested as a beast to which I may never bear witness, of which I may never call my creation, but it's embodiment greatly my responsibility and paradoxically my perception) and my everlasting personal coming-of-age story that doesn't seem to want to end, its conclusion as far flung as my imagination can throw it.

I don't want to be homesick and often I'm not. Time doesn't stand still anywhere and it's unwise to count on it. It's nice to see people's lives accelerate at home, new moments to be treasured and lauded generally excite me. Everyone deserves to have their life move forward according to the pace at which they want, something I've taken for granted surely living in the US, a privilege people have and do die for. However much I feel a part of my community back home, I can still see, everyday, more and more, my negative space, the space I would normally be filling, shrinking, obscuring into less a lack of and more a custom or a habit. Not to say this is a situation of outcry or rage or even sadness, but a sign of growth and the capacity to move on to other social interactions, creating new bridges while others rest, but nonetheless interesting to note as my worlds drift not necessarily apart but begin to have less interconnection and overlap. Growing up is hard to do and following opportunity or adventure involves being drastic at times, sometimes your roots become too overgrown for one pot and the world becomes your home, your fingers and roots and toes and ears stretching and squeezing the dirt, the nutrients of geographical diversity enriching your core, reminding you your health is how you grow, your growth is how you feel, your strength is how far you reach.

Normally, I think a lot of metaphors are kind of tacky and overused, but the idea of just sticking my hands in fresh soil and just squeezing earth is so appealing, the viscerality of it so primal and wild.

Funny Lil Things

The ball comes and I kick. It feels uncomfortable, but I'm trying not to be a wimp anymore. I gaze down, casually, and notice an avant-garde splash of vibrant red offsetting the natural earthen tones of cow manure, sand and shattered brick caked on my toes, the brutal terrain of our makeshift soccer field not heeding the existence of my sandals as protective footwear. I lament, vaguely, for a second and sigh, “chiem (blood)” as the kids gather around my leg, hovering around my navel, obscuring my surrealistic painting of a toe, replacing the view with a pinwheel of bobbing furry black heads, each more curious than the next about my downfall. I apologize for having to quit playing for the day, I just didn't feel like splattering blood everywhere let alone allowing more cow shit and diaper pieces to add to the picture. The kids walk back with me telling everyone on the way I'm bleeding everyone peaking down at my foot, giving me much more anxiety about the state of my feet than the state of my sweaty, red face from trying to play soccer against a bunch of kids half my size. I find the older I get the more soccer mom rage I accumulate; I even stopped at one point and asked a kid who's team he was playing on. More than once. “leng chiemuy krom knhom ot??” He didn't have an answer, just a goofy smile missing his two front teeth while the other kids called him crazy and pushed him around. We lost pretty bad, me picking the underdog team, the kids younger than the rest and prone to running away and dancing on piles of rocks in the middle of a defensive rush. Thanks a lot, guys.
I went home and bucket-showered, washing my toe hoping I don't get gangrene or something and then reflect on what it means to be a volunteer, working in the Cambodian countryside in a world where “goodwill” stories proliferate and I, unwillingly, sometimes subject myself to comparing these stories to my experience within my own cultural psyche inundated with classical classical mixed-messages of “pulling yourself up by bootstraps” while we also venerate “giving to the less fortunate” as essential cultural foundations. How much does my self-critique come from pride and how much from education?
Peace Corps is on its 9th cohort here, interesting compared to some countries on their 50th+ year. We're a newer program and still have hiccups and bumps along the road that are inevitable in any peace corps program and I'm grateful and less pleased to be part of the process of integrating this organization in the inner-workings of the “srok khmai” (Khmer District, slang for Cambodia). When my commitment is essentially finished (if such an experience can ever be finished) the K11s will be coming to replace us K9s, a wild, voracious group that is maybe one of the biggest incoming groups to this country.
So far I have met amazing people working with the Peace Corps here. People that really get me, and hopefully feel vice versa about me. I'm excited to collaborate on projects, share experiences, go adventuring and taking all these relationships back home--or whatever happens.
I was selected to serve on the Diversity Committee for Peace Corps Cambodia with my application invoking a militaristic attitude  towards ignorance, but a gentle, grassroots approach for education. But if anyone who knows me well it'll be hard to separate the two not by my personal affect but by the content and its stubbornness I'm prone to when exacerbating a topic of interest. You know. I'm excited to see where these opportunities lead in terms of community outreach and how it can affect my service and future projects in my community.
My village is a wonderland of slowly-becoming-recognizable faces, if never by name at least by smile. I try to overcome feeling shy, but it's hard sometimes to rationalize approaching strangers, although here there really is no such thing. I want to make it a goal to approach new people when they say, “hello,” in an attempt to reconcile more with this distinction of me as foreign and them as citizens. The more I tell my story, the more support I garner and it's refreshing in its psychological effects even if physical fruition is vague and never begetted. I wish I was fluent in this language and not shy to make mistakes, my anal retentive personality souring my linguistic accomplishments. “Chill out!” my chill, alter-ego named “Chad” whispers to me while making a mixtape and playing frisbee at the same time. Ugh if only, CHAD!
Coming up the first two weeks of February is our in-service training that lasts for two weeks in Phnom Penh full of more training similarly to what we did for the first 2 months. I'm not 100% sure on the details, but from what I heard it sounds like a long break from the country and a lot of umm bonding?
I have my art club going and I have my English club on top of teaching 20 hours formally and 3 hours with the children not including playing occasional soccer. All together rounding out now to about 28 hours of education a week, maybe adding more depending on community needs and assessments, and also depending on my sanity. ~120 hours a month for $140. This is really volunteering to say the least and probably the most in a passive aggressive jab at other “service expeditions” to other countries in “need.”
Bitterness aside, Cambodia is saturated in international aid, a sort of hot spot for favor between the US and China, Japan and South Korea, Australia and Britain, etc etc. Throw a rock, hit an NGO. There aren't any in my village, however, so I have no one to compete with, thankfully, given that any NGO could outspend my personal budget until of course I can receive a grant. Speculations and speculations! I still feel confused about my mannerisms when I eat let alone trying to ask strangers for money to do something.
Each volunteer’s experience is unique and no comparison is, to me, ever deemed acceptable or fair given that anyone is prone to any sort of situation hindering or enabling their time in Peace Corps. When times are hard, you shut your phone off and ignore Facebook, stop comparing, start organizing  and remember your time here as beautiful and rare, a truly one of a kind experience that no one NO ONE has claim to.
(Granted there are instances where the volunteer isn't necessarily being the most helpful or really doing much, but those are few and far between. Ish haha!)
Peace Corps is strange and strange things happen and the stories flow and flow. The moods will swing and the awkwardness will ebb and flow. Health will spiral and climb, feelings of utter impunity versus days of clarity where 40km bike rides are easy peasy.
The drama comes and goes, boredom amongst volunteers grasping to any fragment of ‘normalcy’ in their lives, any sort of power and control and high we get from gossiping about this and that--all dumb and all so good at the same time.
There aren't secrets in peace corps, but who are we to judge anyone????? A question I wish resounded more heavily with some volunteers when they look outwards at others’ experiences.
The time has come to go home and take off my collared shirt and nice pants and just lounge it out. Catch a movie, read a book, do a lesson plan ;) or work on my art piece for art club tomorrow!
Getting back to working with my hands and producing tangible expressions is something I've been missing and I'm excited to indulge in my creativity once more. Oh and try to explain Picasso in Khmer to however many students show up.
Wish me luck
Okun churan, metpeak