The Stampede

As most of you probably already know, there was a terrible tragedy in Phnom Penh earlier this week, leaving almost 400 victims dead. A stampede broke out on a suspension bridge during Water Festival Monday night, which draws in millions of people to the city to watch boat races and celebrate the end of rainy season. There is a lot of speculation about the cause of the stampede, but from what I've gathered, the hundreds of people on the bridge (who gathered to watch a concert) were spooked after a cannon trying to disperse people from the bridge was fired, causing pandemonium to ensue. People swept up in the mass exodus were trampled, suffocated, electrocuted or drowned after falling into the water below.

Many of the people who go into the city to partake in Water Festival are from the more rural parts of Cambodia. It's the one time of the year they look forward to going into "the big city" and enjoying the many festivities of Water Festival. A city of over 1 million becomes jampacked with more than 4 million people. It was for this reason that I chose not to go to Phnom Penh for the weekend, as most other volunteers decided as well. That many people crowded in such a small space and something bad is bound to happen; but who would think it'd be a stampede?

Cambodia has a population of about 15 million people, less than twice that of NYC. It seems that everyone in this country is connected to everyone else through someone; most families have lots of kids, some of whom end up moving away to far off provinces, broadening the family's circle of friends/acquaintances. I found out that 30 people from my little province of Svay Rieng were killed in the stampede, and my host mother knew (very indirectly) someone from a different province that died. The theory of "six degrees of separation" seems more like two degrees here, so with 400 people passing, it seems like everyone I've talked to knows someone (indirectly) who was affected by this tragedy. Last night, most Cambodians put out offerings outside their house and lit candles for the ghosts of the victims who passed. The incident has been all over the news, and unlike other places where privacy rights prevail, Cambodian t.v. doesn't hide any bloody details. Faces of mangled bodies and loved ones trying to identify them are shown all over the news.

It has been interesting to observe Cambodians and their reactions during this time. Some are sad, but far more make jokes or laugh when talking about the incident. I guess one might call this "their own way" of dealing with things, but part of me can't help but think it stems from their inability to deal with tragedy, a vestige from the Kmai Rouge era. If you read about some of the horrendous things that occurred during the Kmai Rouge genocide, you are left thinking that everyone who survived has got to be dealing with some serious psychological issues; how could they not be to some extent? The people who survived, who are now parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, are raising the newer generation and passing on their own coping strategies to their children, coping strategies which may employ laughter, denial and/or any other ways to avoid the real issue. I cannot ascertain that my theory is correct because I do not know how Cambodians dealt with grief in the pre-Kmai Rouge era, but it is something that I am continually trying to learn more about. Certain things can be chalked up to cultural differences but something tells me that laughing upon hearing someone was suffocated to death does not fall under this category.

The Cambodian government is paying the families of the victims $1500 per victim. As my mom tells me, "if you had a lot of family members die, you'd make a lot of money." Um, is it me or is that statement extremely dysfunctional? Like I said, there are some serious issues that need to be looked into. And PM Hun Sen- thanks for putting a price tag of $1500 on a human life.

Some pics from the NY Times of the aftermath of the tragedy:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/11/23/world/CAMBODIA.html

The wonderful Navy

I have not yet elaborated on one of my favorite parts of Cambodia- my host mother, Navy. She is the feistiest, funniest, most awesome Kmai woman I have yet to meet. Every morning while I am out on my morning run, she is already up and doing the laundry, no small feat for a family of 6. She makes sure everything is clean (an especially subjective adjective here) and functioning properly. If she's not repairing some holes in my brother's pants, she's washing our bikes, preparing food, sweeping, gardening or doing some other activity that I'm sure I don't even know about.

My favorite thing about mae ('mom' in Kmai) is her sense of humor. She LOVES talking about anything that has to do with love/romance (another subjective concept here). She is constantly trying to find me a Kmai husband, even though I've repeatedly told her that I am not interested in marrying anyone for a long time. Just when I think I've managed to subdue Navy's interest in my romantic life, she switches to her favorite pastime: fortune telling. She tells me that I will be married with 3 kids by the time I'm 28. I initially tried to explain that her clairvoyance is lacking serious practicality, seeing as how I will probably still be busy with my studies at that age. But now I've realized it's far easier and more fun to play along with her. Not only am I a favorite subject when it comes to matchmaking, but my fellow Svay Rieng volunteers are fair game as well. For the longest time, my host mother could not stop talking about how Jeremy and Kristin were a couple. "They're both short so obviously they must be a couple," she tells me. I tried to explain that they were not a couple, and I've finally managed to drive this point home, a mere year after repeatedly having this discussion.

When the topic isn't one of us volunteers, the attention shifts to my youngest host sis, Dany. My mom jokes that she has 15 boyfriends (she is 15) and I still am not sure if this is a joke or a reality. Different boys are constantly calling the house for her and Navy always makes sure to alert me when it's one of her song sah's (boyfriends) calling. One day, her song sah from Phnom Penh came to our house to eat lunch with us. Talk about awkward. Two 15-year olds sitting across from each other and utter silence while we are eating. I tried to suppress my laughter, but I caught Dany's eyes and started chuckling. She turned bright red and made sure not to look at her boy for the duration of our awkward lunch. Afterwards, my host mom couldn't stop making fun of Dany and saying that her boyfriend was only s'aht dah (kind of cute). One of the many topics Kmai mothers are brutally honest about.

Typically Kmai women are expected to be sopheap; soft-spoken, shy and delicate. This can be really challenging, especially with getting female students to participate in class and come out of their shells. But Navy is anything but sopheap. She stands up to my slimy host dad, makes inappropriate jokes, and sometimes even has a beer or two with the boys. I love that she defies the sterotypical submissive Kmai woman; she is an extremely strong woman and doesn't put up with anyone's crap.

Some of my favorite Navy moments:

I accidentally walked in on her changing and got a full frontal view of her boobs. I immediately averted my eyes and kept apologizing, but she just laughed and jokingly asked me if I wanted to see her boobs again. I politely declined and she continued to ask me if I wanted a peek for the next week.

The words for "lady boy" (transgender person) and "vagina" sound extremely similar in Kmai, and I embarrassingly mixed them up one day when I was trying to ask if one of the characters on a tv show was transgender. The whole family erupted in laughter and I turned beet-red after I realized my blunder. Every now and then, Navy will shout the Kmai word for vagina at me to remind me that I am an idiot. I still turn red and her guffaws grow increasingly powerful every time.

Once in a while, Navy feels like talking politics. Men don't even openly talk about politics here, especially if they are not Hun-Sen supporters (which she is not), so I was extremely taken aback when Navy first confided in me. The other night, she saw Hun Sen on tv and started spewing nasty expletives about Hun Sen and his corrupt administration. She was talking so fast that I could barely follow the conversation. But I did manage to understand one of her funny observations about Hun Sen- he has one real eye, and one glass eye (not exactly sure what happened there) and Navy said that "the only thing his glass eye enables him to see are the Vietnamese and their money." His glass eye is conveniently blind to his own people. Bravo, Navy!

Navy is very curious about Westerners and kissing. She thinks it is very strange that people kiss on the mouth, as Kmai people sniff each other. No, I am not kidding. Mothers sniff their babies, boyfriends sniff their girlfriends. That is the Kmai version of affection. So it is very strange to me when I watch Kmai music videos and the point at which two people would normally kiss in a Western video always turns into a sniffing moment. So one night, Navy asked me how long people kiss for. I told her it varies from person to person, maybe a few mins, maybe an hour. I did tell her that we definitely don't sniff each other. She and my host brother now love to joke that when I get married, I will kiss my husband for 20 hours. She has been trying to teach me the correct Kmai sniffing strategy, but I told her I'll stick to good ol Western kissing.

Thanks, Navy, for always keeping things interesting!

Svay Rieng Thanksgiving

This past weekend all of us Svay Riengers (Kristin, Kellee, Jeremy, Dillon, Alan, Andrea and myself) celebrated Thanksgiving together. Yes, we are a few weeks early, but our schedules didn't align to have it during actual Thanksgiving and we thought it was more important to have everyone together. Besides, this was the most non-traditional Thanksgiving we could have possibly had, so it's only fitting that we didn't celebrate at the traditional time.

My host siblings

We decided to have it at my house, since my kitchen is pretty spacious and we have more than enough space to accommodate everyone. Little did we know we would be invading the kitchen for practically the whole day, but my family is amazing and was more than willing to watch us sweat it out in the kitchen making our weird foreign food. We decided to make Mexican food, since all of the ingredients are readily available at the market and it's pretty easy to throw together (little did we know...). Friday morning, Kristin and I went to Bavet to visit the hyper-market, the Vietnamese version of Sam's club. I honestly don't know why I don't venture out there more often- it's so close and they have everything I could possibly want. Crossing the border is a little tricky without a Vietnamese visa, but that's where our language skills come in to play. Kristin and I befriended the border guards and told them we needed to go to the market to buy a few ingredients to make our special food for an American holiday. They were SHOCKED that we could speak Kmai and had us sit down for a good 10 minutes before they waved us on through. After getting over the sheer vastness of the store, we settled on our items for our upcoming feast and a few treats for ourselves. We even found Starbuck's ready-made frappacino's, which we obviously couldn't pass up!

Kristin and Starbuck's!

Upon crossing back over the border, our new friends called us over and introduced us to some other guards. We were talking for a while and they told us they were very interested in learning English (as every other Kmai person tells me); perhaps I could come teach them? They kept us asking us questions like "Say get on the bus or get in the bus?" We answered a few of their questions when one of the guards asks us if we've arranged transportation back yet. We tell him no and he tells us to follow him, which we do right after we give all the guards our numbers (I'm just waiting to get the traditional series of stalker calls that begins after I give out my number here). Bora, the guard who asked us to follow him, starts talking to a tour bus driver (the main highway transporting tourists from Ho Chi Minh to PP runs through my town) and tells him that we are volunteers in Cambodia and we speak Kmai. He says that because we are helping his country, they need to give back to us. So the driver agrees to drop us off in Svay Rieng for FREE! Bora tells us to call him anytime we go to Bavet again and need help arranging complimentary rides to and from. Oh the perks of being a Peace Corps volunteer.

Our American breakfast

So yesterday was a day of cooking, eating, cooking, eating, and more cooking. I have a newfound respect for my host mother who cooks for a family of 6 (7 including me) and does it with such effortlessness, always serving up a delicious meal. First we made a delicious breakfast, which consisted of banana pancakes and maple syrup, fruit, veggie omelettes, fresh bread, juice and coffee. Kristin manned the pancakes, while I prepared the huge omelette. My host mother stood by and watched us make everything and was quite perplexed by all of this mystery food. After devouring our very American breakfast, we started prepping for lunch. Kristin and I volunteered to make the tortillas, which we had no idea would take as long as they did. If there's one thing Cambodia teaches you, it's how to improvise and be creative. My job was to flatten the tortillas out, but we were lacking rolling pins. So my family had the brilliant idea of using Angkor beer bottles, which worked perfectly! We underestimated how long it would take to make 50+ tortillas and we ended up spending hours making them. My family even joined in to help; talk about a cross-cultural experience. American PCVs teaching Cambodians how to make Mexican food in Cambodia. Meanwhile, salsa was being prepared, as was seasoned ground beef (thanks to Alan's fine chopping skills), black beans, and a fajita stir fry. I gave my host family some cheddar cheese to try, which they thought was absolutely disgusting! It was the same expression I had on my face when I first tried the Cambodian cheese, prahok, which is basically fermented fish paste. I can see why Kmai-Americans have a very difficult time adjusting to the food when they immigrate to the states.

Kristin and I making tortillas

I invited some of the VSA volunteers (from New Zealand, or 'kiwis' as they are commonly referred to) in my town to join in the delicious feast. I especially loved watching my host family eat the food. I asked my mom what she liked the most and she said the black beans. Of course. The most basic thing that is already occasionally part of their diet. After cleaning up, Alan and Kristin teamed up to make pecan pies and brownies. Alan used a recipe all the way from his native Georgia, and Kristin, being the baking pro that she is, whipped up some brownies basically from scratch. How did we bake these, one might ask? My neighbors down the road have the one oven in Svay Rieng (I am pretty sure it's the only one), which they use to supply the market with fresh, delicious bread. Kellee went over in the morning and asked them if we could use their oven to bake some stuff in the afternoon and they happily agreed. Despite the fact that the oven is probably not the most sanitary of ovens, it did the trick and we were able to have delicious pecan pies (with crusts made from scratch) and chocolate brownies! We shared them with my host family and the kids that were at the house where the oven was, and everyone seemed to love them! Note to self- sweets are a universal delicacy. I've never had a meal that was (a) so hard to prepare and (b) so enjoyable.

My neighbor's oven

Our pecan pie and brownies

As it's around Thanksgiving, here are a few things that I am thankful for:

*My health
*My amazing 2 families- My incredibly kind and loving host family in Cambodia, to which I largely accredit my happiness/sanity in this constant journey and my real family back home, who have been incredibly supportive and inquistive about all the things I see, learn and feel.
*My wonderful friends, both in and out of Peace Corps.
*Coming from a country where I am not only taught to critically think, but have the leisure to ponder more abstract ideas.
*The Economist
*My Svay Rieng PCV's (fam). We are lucky we have such a good vibe.
*My french press.
*Speaking English as a first language.
*Obama as our president.
*Being sent to Cambodia for Peace Corps. I couldn't have picked a more amazing place to serve.

Svay Rieng volunteers

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone back home! The next time I celebrate it, I'll be back home with family and friends!

Harvest time

Rice fields not yet ready for harvest

So it's that time of the year again- the transition of lush, verdant rice fields to cracked, dry and barren land, which means it's time to harvest rice! Harvest season usually begins in November and goes through January, depending on the type of rice that is being cultivated. I have been repeatedly asking all my co-teachers to help with rice harvest, but none of them have taken me seriously. "Why would you want to do that? It's boring and not interesting," they tell me. But I think it's really interesting and such an intrinsic part of life for most Cambodians. So finally, I convinced my co-teacher Pilot to let me help him harvest rice. So I met him this afternoon ready to get down to work. But the sky was an ominous gray which I figured would prevent any serious labor from taking place. When I met him, the first thing I noticed was that he was absolutely trashed. I don't think inebriation is a prerequisite for harvesting rice, but you just never know here. It was the afternoon so I am guessing he had a mini-party before meeting up with me. I was a little nervous about learning how to use a sickle (a very sharp and scary object used to cut the rice stalk) from a drunk man, but there were others nearby, so I figured it'd be fine.

So stumbling a little bit, Pilot showed me how to use the sickle to cut the rice. It's not very hard, but I can't imagine cutting an entire field of it. Gives new meaning to the term "back-breaking work." I cut a few stalks and all the Kmai spectators gave a few cheers. Then it started pouring, which was probably a blessing in disguise. I don't think I would have enjoyed harvesting for a prolonged period of time. Afterward, we sat under Pilot's house, where I was forced to take a nasty shot of rice wine out of a questionably-clean bowl. We'll see how my stomach feels tomorrow...

My co-teacher Pilot



I highly recommend rice harvesting to any of you who have a chance. It's one thing to hear about the laborious work farmers must do day in and day out, but it's a whole other experience to actually do it yourself.

Pilot tells me I'm slow at harvesting...

Doing my best