Walking as a way of life...

Walking everywhere

We (Peace Corps Volunteers) walk a lot here in Cambodia, when we aren't riding our bicycles.  For safety reasons, we aren't allowed to drive, nor be passengers on motorcycles, so we either ride bikes or walk.  

That said, walking isn't always all that safe as there are virtually no sidewalks and the motorized vehicles often pay little heed to the traffic laws.  This means, in short, that while walking may be a way of life, it's often a flirtation with death.

Motorcycles abound

Most of the local Cambodians don't walk or ride bikes as much as we do, rather they ride on small motorcycles or scooters, known here as  'motos'.  They are everywhere here and you will see almost anything you can imagine on them or being pulled by them. 

One favorite use of the moto is the tuk-tuk, a style of taxi which has a moto on the front pulling a small wagon behind.  Most of the time, they carry just a few people, but since the tuk-tuk is paid for by the trip, not the person, sometimes they carry a lot of people at once or a lot of cargo!

Another thing about motos is that they do not need to be licensed (nor do the drivers) for units up to and including 125cc (at least that's what we were told here in our house).  This leads to a lot of small motos on the road and even smaller drivers - some of them look like they are only 10!

Doing what we are supposed to do

We are doing what we are supposed to be doing during our first two weeks at our site.  We are getting familiar with the village and its people.  We are meeting the locals, buying from the market, cooking with local ingredients, and eating and drinking at local establishments.  We are becoming integrated into the community.  Our looks may not say that we belong, but our behavior will soon.

Host Sister Heang

Hot peppers here are HOT!

The sellers at the market are starting to know us and who we are.  Yesterday, Gary went to the market alone and they all asked him where I was.  We usually go together -- trying to navigate the new language, currency, ingredients, etc. is a challenge best tackled when there are two heads.

Fortunately, the pork seller that we prefer is our host sister, Heang.  And the chicken seller that we go to is her older sister.  (There are 11 brothers and sisters in the family and they all live around here.  And there is always someone that has whatever we need!)

  

 All we have to do is ask our host sister where we can have (blank).   We ask her about where to buy something, where to eat or drink something, where to find transportation, where to meet the school directors, etc.  She knows everything.  She has the most honest and delightful smile, so I know she is a happy person.  I also think that she is well regarded in this community.  Nice to be connected, right?

Breakfast noodles with our cook.

Sister Heang recommended that we eat breakfast at the noodle place right behind her chicken-selling station.  The store owner/cook is delightful.  She has a great smile and she is always dressed like a model.

Kuyteav is Rathi's specialty.

Kuyteav is a common breakfast food here consisting of broth, rice noodles and toppings.  Toppings can include thin slices of meat, bean sprouts and other chopped herbs.  We also like to add chili pepper.

We can see Rathi driving a moto or a bicycle around town with a beautiful large brimmed straw hat and flashing her delightful smile at everyone.

Yesterday, Rathi introduced us to two young ladies.  These are 15 and 16 year old sisters that live and go to school in Siem Reap.  They are in our village visiting with their aunt.  The sisters and Rathi were hanging out at a small restaurant on the main street of the village.  The restaurant is just a small hut where the owner makes and sells soup.  Here in the village, people specialize in one thing.  The noodle bowl lady sells only that. The fish soup lady sells just that.  The pork seller sells only pork. The chicken seller sells only chicken.

When we saw Rathi, she immediately pulled out chairs and had us sit down and visit with them.  We are doing what we are supposed to be doing!  Meeting people, explaining to them that we are volunteers, making friends, finding out more about life in the Bode.

Anyhow, about these two beautiful sisters.....they speak pretty decent English, which they have learned at school, and they were very glad to practice it.  They are both smart and have aspirations to study beyond high school.  The older one wants to be a doctor and the younger one wants to be an IT engineer.  They both said that they also would like to be teachers - probably because their aunt and uncle, who live in town are teachers.  Rathana and Chandy invited us to join them for lunch today.  They know of a place nearby that sells great roasted chicken and they would like to show us around. So we will all go there for lunch today, including Rathi, the noodle queen.

The one thing about Rathana is that she was born without knees.  Somehow, she gets around on her own two feet, albeit with difficulty, but both sisters were eager to ask us if we knew someone who could help her have some surgery to give her knees.   If any of you, who are reading this post, have any ideas, please let me know!

Rathana, top left, and her sisters (and a cousin).  The little sister in the middle also has no knees.

We have also gotten to know our neighbors.  When we walk from the house to the market and back again twice a day, it's easy to run into our neighbors -- specially since they are so curious about us.  Somehow, they are outside to say "hello".  We make it a point to stop and greet them and to introduce ourselves.  I don't think we are giving anybody any new information, just a personal confirmation that we are here.  One of the people we have met is Mr. Hoksly.  Mr. Hoksly drives a tuk tuk.  He told us that he could take us to Siem Reap and bring us back for a fair price.  Of course, at the time, we didn't know what a fair price was.  However, we have found out that his quote is quite good. The other day, we visited Siem Reap. We got there by car - a car that was arranged by our sister Heang for a good price.  We had been running errands in Siem Reap for many hours and were very tired when we saw Mr. Hoksly wave at us from across the street.  At first I thought he was just another eager tuk tuk driver looking for the next ride.  But then we recognized him as our neighbor.  We asked him for a ride back home and we was more than happy to call it a day.  Normally, he rides home (about 15 miles) with an empty tuk tuk.  If we can give him business for a fair price, why not help our neighbors, right?  From now on, we will rely on Mr. Hoksly as much as possible for our rides into town.

The Icee man

Next door to the tuk tuk driver is the hair salon.  The children at this home love to buy a treat from the icee man.  He comes around daily, with his moto that has a cooler as a side car.  There he sells shaved ice with flavors for the kids for 500 Rial, which is equivalent to 12.5 cents.


Another friendly neighbor that we have met is a grandma who lives right next door. She was outside with a tiny baby (I would guess 3 months old).  Being that I am a sucker for babies, and that we are out to meet people, we stopped to meet her as well.  What a beautiful woman she is.  With my limited Khmer I understood (or misunderstood) that she is helping her son or daughter because things are not going so well for them.  This grandma had five children and has five grandchildren.

Yesterday, she visited our home to buy some freshly cooked pork rinds from our host family.  She saw that I was doing laundry and came to talk with me.  Of course, laundry in Cambodia is done very differently than laundry in the USA or even in Spain.  However, it seems that everybody in Cambodia does the laundry the same way.   This neighbor-grandma noticed that I was hanging my clothes a little bit differently than the standard, and she didn't hesitate to show me how it's done.  As it turns out, I was securing the pants on the hangers with a belt loop that was not the one on the center-back of the pants. She gave me this tip with all the good will that she could muster.

I have found that most of the people in the village are thrilled that we are here.  They love to see us and to talk with us.  This village has lots of tourists riding through, however, we are here to stay, and they know it.  They have seen us day after day for 12 days and they are getting used to us.  And we are also feeling like we belong. This is our home for the next two years and these are our neighbors.   We have felt very welcome here - not only by our own host family, but also by the neighbors.

End of PST

Pre-Service Training finally ends!

We've spent nearly 9 weeks, training for our posting to rural Cambodia.  No one will tell you that it was easy, in fact, it was pretty intense.  Lots and lots of language training (more than 150 hours!), and still we feel like babies when left to communicate with the local people. For the most part, we can communicate, often with hands and body language when the words evade, but communicate we do!

We also learned a fair bit about Cambodian history and culture.  This lets us integrate more smoothly, but a lot of the time, it simply lets us beware of how much integration there is to be done.

Swearing In

September 15, 2017 - This was the date of our official swearing in as Peace Corps Volunteers.  Until then, we were only Peace Corps Trainees, but now we're official.

This is our cohort of 71 new Peace Corps Volunteers.  Some 34 are ETTT (English Teacher and Teacher Trainer) and 37 CHE (Community Health Education) [Peace Corps loves acronyms!]

We were personally greeted by Mr. Im Koch, Secretary of State, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, Cambodia.  A great honor indeed.

Arriving at our new home

After around 4 hours drive from the swearing in ceremony in Phnom Penh, we arrived at our new home in rural Siem Reap Province.  

This is the family we'll live with for the next 2 years - father & mother, mother's youngest sister (one of 11!), the [grand] mother and little nephew.

and now, the adventure truly begins!

What do you do with your free time?

Given the risk of portraying a "single story" about either culture, I'd like to start with a disclaimer.  What I know about American culture and about Cambodian culture is only my own point of view and I represent only my own experiences.  I know that Cambodians and Americans live a variety of lives and that many are as unique as each person.  Now, given that disclaimer, I'd like to tell you what I've experienced so far.

Cambodian people work seven days a week.  Sometimes more than one job.  Incomes are very small and in order to live they must work as much as possible.   However, every once in a while, especially during an important holiday, workers close up their shops and spend their free time with family and friends.

So far that doesn't sound much different than what Americans do, right?  Memorial day, Labor day, Independence day....we don't work and we spend time having picnics and food with family and friends.  But somehow, it's different here.  Let me see if I can explain it.

Outing to Bokor National Park

When we were living in Phnom Penh, Gary's host family invited us to visit two places nearby on two separate Sundays.   The first outing was to a national park in Kampot province called Bokor Mountain.  We drove over 3 hours to get there.  Before we arrived, the family stopped at a market to buy raw shrimp, raw crabs and cooked rice and two large bottles of water.

I wasn't sure what was going on.  We drove into the national park and up to the top of the mountain where the view was sometimes obscured by a layer of low clouds.  Our Cambodian friends warned us that we could "touch the clouds" in Bokor mountain!

When we got to the top, we found a spot under a small tree and the host family deployed a whole picnic there.  This was a huge surprise.

First two straw mats, then a small gas burner.  The host mother began by cleaning the shrimp and the crabs with some of the water.  The host brother started boiling water in a sauce pan.  Before we knew it, we were eating some delicious boiled shrimp and crab with white rice.

On the way back from the picnic, we stopped along the side of the road many times.  First we stopped at Kep province at the crab market to buy more fresh crab to take home.   And then along the road there are many kiosks selling whatever local products there are in that area.  We stopped over and over again to buy all kinds of things, including Tiep (a local fruit that I think is called "cataracts" in English, but I've never seen it before), boiled corn on the cob, which we ate in the car, ch-huey, a delicious dessert which is served inside a coconut, and now I don't even remember what else....it seemed like we were eating the whole way!

Outing to Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center

On another Sunday, Gary's host family invited us to a "zoo" in Takeo province.  This time, the car ride was only 1.5 hours.  It's not really a zoo.  It's a wildlife rescue center and the animals were in very large spaces that looked very natural.  But that's not why I'm writing this.  I'm writing because our outing followed the same pattern as the first one.  First we stopped to buy the food.

This time, the food was cooked.  Most of it was fish or frogs cooked on a bamboo stick over an open fire.  We also bought a whole deep fried chicken and of course, rice.  We found a gazebo with a straw mat that we rented so that we could set up our picnic and voila!  Picnic deployed.  First things first, though: a man with a motorcycle loaded with coconuts sold us our fresh drink.

We ate and drank and at some point we had a little visitor that came to eat peanuts with us!

When the picnic was finished, we packed up the car and drove home.  Just like before, we stopped at the side of the road to buy whatever local products the people were selling.  Now I don't even remember what these were.

If one's an incident, two's a coincidence, then three's a pattern.

Outing to Kulen Mountain and Waterfall

While we lived in the Phnom Penh area, we made friends with our tailor.  That's right.  The clothes here are made to order for a great price.  Right before we left the area, we ordered a few more articles of clothing and had some of our trousers altered (we have gotten smaller since we got here.)  Our tailor, whose name is Long, told us that he'd contact us when he came to Siem Reap so he could show us around.  He used to be a driver in the city.  We had been in our new home only three days when he called!  It was a holiday here in Cambodia and he closed up his shop and came to see family in Siem Reap.  He and his lovely wife wanted to take us to the famous Kulen mountain waterfall.

This sweet young couple took us to the entrance of the Kulen park but we weren't able to get in because it was a bit late in the day.  But that didn't discourage anybody!  The whole idea of a holiday in Cambodia is to go on the road to somewhere, stop at the side of the road to buy something local and then have a great big picnic!  And that's exactly what we did.  We didn't see the waterfall, but we did stop to buy honeycombs on the side of the road.

The honey comb came on a stick and in a plastic bag.  Lickety split delicious and sweet....after we released all the bees.

And then we found a grassy area near one of the Angkor Wat temples to have a picnic.  We rented the mats and four hammocks and a woman with a menu came to offer us food.  We ordered food and next thing you know we are eating a papaya salad with crabs and fried chicken.

We had a conversation about the pattern that I am discovering.  What do Cambodians do with their free time?  Many go on a road trip to see some part of the country.  They stop at the side of the road to buy a local product. They have a picnic with loads of delicious food.  I was remarking on this when our Cambodian friends asked us what we do with our time off.   Many Americans also celebrate holidays with picnics and road trips.  But we have so much more free time off!  Americans have two out of seven days off.  That is a luxury that is often overlooked and seldom appreciated. On those days off we do DIY home improvement projects and yard work.  Cambodians don't have that much free time.  The little that they do have is used for family, friends and food and for touring their beautiful country.