The Coming of the King/Why We Teach (English)

I am currently four days deep into our six-day practicum week, practicing teaching English to a real, live Cambodian class.  While there have been frustrating moments, I view the week as a huge success so far as I am concerned.  I have been in front of my class about four times now and have enjoyed every moment. 

We all work in groups of three Peace Corps Trainees - all of us newly-minted and greenhorn English teachers.  We are only midway through our Pre-Service Training, so this is the time that we begin to use some of the teaching tactics and strategies to see what works, what doesn't and what will cause your kids to laugh at you for minutes on end in a standard Cambodian classroom. 

It can't be mentioned enough, I am working with some of Peace Corps' finest future teachers - Libby and Gilbert - thanks to you both for a fantastic and smooth (so far, knock on wood, throw salt over your shoulder, hit the light switch three times) week.  We are teaching an "English Crash Course" focusing on some of the basics, but really just "testing" our methods out on these amazingly bright and eager kids.  The feedback we have gotten from current PCVs doing the job that we will be soon has been invaluable, but more so is the chance to get in front of a class and just start teaching (finally).

Today was a pretty big day for us PCTs, as well as for our school, as the King of Cambodia drove by our school, waving out the top of an SUV.  I should disclaim, this isn't a HUGE deal, and probably made us PCTs more excited than the rest of the school.  Cambodia is about the size of Minnesota, so whenever the King travels he tries to "greet his people."  Also, there are only like eight paved roads in Cambodia, so he is bound to pass you by a few times a year. 

As our school emptied, students and staff lined the highway (yes, kids on a highway is usually a bad idea, but not so irregular in Cambodia...) with pictures of the King and waved Cambodia flags as his motorcade drove by.  My kids noticed, what I am told, is my huge resemblance to the King on day one of teaching them, and ever since we found out that the King was driving by they couldn't help but hold up his picture next to my face to compare.  I have to admit, at one point I had delusions of grandeur that the King would see me waving to him as he drove by, stop the car, and recognize me as the American brother he never knew - but it wasn't meant to be (though I am fairly sure that our eyes locked as he drove by, and that we shared something beyond words...). 

I can't say how rewarding and educational this week has been so far with still a few more days left to go.  I hope it is a sign of things to come, but the reality is that many Cambodia classrooms are in terrible shape, students are taught by and large by teachers who are ill-trained and unmotivated, and often times they have difficulty learning due to hunger or a lack of materials and supplies.  Many of the students I have taught this week speak English fairly well already and we know they are eager to learn as PC asked the community for volunteers since school is out of session this time of year. 

All this rambling brings me to my point: the Peace Corps' mission in Cambodia is a valid and difficult one.  I am not tooting my own horn nor am I commenting on the politics of how well Peace Corps does or doesn't do their work in a larger sense.  I want to point out the difficulties and need in what will soon be a tiny sliver of the world that I feel partially responsible for in some way.  Cambodia is a nation that is still trying to gain its footing after a decimating civil war/genocide in the 1970s and is simultaneously trying to compete against some of Asia's biggest rising (economic) powers like Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.  As my grandma always says, "Education is the great equalizer," and thus the Peace Corps is here. 

Teaching English abroad may be some backpackers' wet dream for a "true cultural experience."  It is a way, for some, to put in a small effort teaching a skill they are already masters of to others who need those language skills to acquire better jobs, make more money, etc. Its a way for someone to say, "I did this, I helped and I have pictures to prove it," without giving too much thought to what happens next to the community you just helped.  It automatically makes you "worldly." I am not criticizing, help is help for those that need it. 

The way Peace Corps does it, is to not simply turn us loose upon the poor Cambodian masses and start getting them to pronounce the "th" sound (its really hard for them!), but to give us the tools, methods, language and cultural experience to become fully integrated members of our communities, to identify their problems and provide sustained and lasting help as one of them.  Teaching English opens doors for many, many students in Cambodia, and not necessarily for all the reasons one might guess.  Yes, many English speakers in this country strive to be tour guides or interpreters for rich American companies and the like.  However, the native language here, K'mai, is spoken by a very small minority of the world.  Combine this with the mass killings of Cambodia's intellectual class by the K'mai Rouge and you have a wayward, starving country that then must rebuild itself and compete with the world without the help of its best and brightest.  Beyond this, after the K'mai Rouge, Cambodia had no way of educating its youngest generation in specialized skills as the majority of its teachers and intellectuals were also killed.  English then, becomes a bridge for higher learning for many Cambodians.  If you want to be a doctor, lawyer or virtually any other kind of professional, you need to speak English (ok, ok I hear the anti-imperialists...English OR another highly used language like Chinese or French...) to be able to learn and acquire the necessary skills to practice your trade.  "Just teaching English" then becomes the ladder to the next level for many young, bright Cambodians and may give this country more of an edge to compete against other nations and forger a better future for itself. 

So for all you Peace Corps/English Teacher naysayers, here is a point for the good guys, and hopefully makes some folks understand why I want to be here and why I am really excited to start doing my job. 

The Rat

I don't claim to be a tough guy or superhero, despite my constant joking claims that I am, in fact, Batman. However, there are few things that truly frighten or scare me.  Bugs, thrill seeking sports, heights, snakes...even commitment, I can handle.  Rats are one of the only things that really makes my spine tingle and palms sweat.

If you have ever read Orwell's 1984, you might recall a scene where the main character is led to a torture room, "Room 101," where he is made to confess to a crime he did not commit.  The torturers know everything about the character, including his worst fear: rats. When I read this scene I immediately realized that I shared the same "Room 101" with the character.  When I read further about how the torturers strapped a cage to his face so that the rats could nibble at his vital bits freely, I came forever to the anti-torture side of the torture debate. 

I needed to give you that insight before plunging into my latest and perhaps most terrifying story since being in country.

One very dark night...its always very dark for stories like these...I was happily enjoying my evening in bed under mosquito netting.  I was reading a book with my headlamp on and my wife laying next to me doing the same. Since I have an old-man-bladder, I had to pee about twenty minutes after I had gotten into bed.  This is a terrible hassle for me after it takes about ten minutes to get into bed, cooled off and cozy.  It never fails that once I am all tucked in and ready to fall asleep to the caccophany of frogs croaking and dogs barking outside I develop the urge to pee.  Now, getting out of bed here is not exactly the same as when I am at my home in the US...there I just throw the covers off, step onto the knowingly bug-free, plush carpeted floor, and stroll through my air conditioned home to my bathroom (which has indoor plumbing and toilet paper).  Nothing about this scenario matches with its Cambodian counterpart.  

First, I must quickly untuck a portion of the mosquito netting from under the mattress in order to exhume myself from the bed.  I am careful to tuck in the net once outside to avoid a chiding from my wife about letting disease-laced bugs come into the lone sanctuary of our bug-free bed.  I am sure to grab a flashlight as it is pitch dark and my bathroom has no running water, so I must be able to see what I am doing to pour water down the drain to ""flush."

On this particular evening, I grabbed my flashlight on my way out of the bedroom and turned it on before opening the door to our larger living area which I needed to cross in order to get to the bathroom.  When I opened the door I heard a distinct scuffling from where we typically store our books and some snacks by the front door.  I  whipped my flashlight around thinking it was one of the larger, but albeit harmless, geckos that live in our house.  Instead, my eyes focused on the distinct image of a medium sized rat who was now frozen from the beam of my flashlight.  I freaked the hell out.

I walked back into the bedroom to tell my wife, who I knew would identitfy with my current level of fear - after all this is the same woman (who loves me, remind you) that would grab the stuffed animal rats at Ikea and pretend that they were scurring up my back to ban vanquish this beast for me.

Her response was less than comforting, "Oh my god - really?!  I am really freaked out right now. What are you going to do?"

In retrospect, I see the humor.  In the moment, I felt like my fellow soldiers had just left me behind enemy lines.

After the initial fear that encircled me when Kate told me that she was staying put behind the mosquito-net-forcefield, I took a deep breath, hiked my boxer briefs up in a show of pride and responded to her, "I'm going to kill the bastard."

(*Note, my words may have been different, and I can't fully remember the seaquence of events, what is important to remember is that I definately did NOT cry, and I certainly did NOT urinate on myself.)

I located a sturdy weapon with which to vanquish my toothy-long-tailed-foe: an electrified raquet we use to bug-zap mosquitos.  I was pretty sure the voltage was not strong enough to kill a rat of this size, but I hoped that the raquet itself would do as a bludgeon.  To paint the picture: I was in my boxer briefs, croutched in an army-like position holding a flashlight in one hand and the electrified raquet in the other.  I also had my headlamp on for added visibility and coolness. By this time, fear and the stiffiling heat meant that I was a sweatty mess and literally dripping, but God did I feel alive...

The rat had entrenched him or herself under the day bed in our main room and that was where I decided to fight my first battle of the evening.  I lunged at the beast, ensuring to shine my light on his face to stun it like before, but the creature was ready for me and narrowly escaped my first salvo.  It ran along the walls of the room for cover, me running after it and alternating between highly intimidating and inapporpiate swears and noises that a four-year-old girl with pigtails might make if she were to scrape her knee. 

The beast finally ran behind my Peace Corps issued trunk - a fatally-flawed move- and I reacted with the instincts of a cat and the speed of a ninja.  Shoving the trunk againt the wall, I pinned the beast in what should have been his deathbed.  As I drew nearer to crush him between the wall and the trunk, the brute jumped over the chest and ran straight into our bedroom, under our bed.  The clever beast had outwitted me in a brillant showing of strategy and cunning that Sun T'zu could scarcely have avoided. 

I should also mention at this point that my trusty sidearm had failed me - when I went to strike at it, the handle of the raquet broke from the rest of it and skittered away out of reach.  I realized that I may have to settle for a draw on the evening and began rooting out the beast from its new encampment - I was urged on by my steadfast wife yelling encouraging slogans and words of praise, "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD - IT CAME IN HERE!!  GET. IT. OUT. CHRIS-GETITOUT!!!" (Those of you who know my wife know that I cleaned up that dialogue a bit - I wanted to keep this a PG blog posting).

I had him on the run again and saw him run 'round behind me - he was trying to flank me yet again - only this time I was ready and I had arranged the furniture to funnel him out of our bedroom and back into the main room.  It was there that I lost him, presumably he fled, realizing the equal in his foe and the inevitable stalemate that would ultimately ensue. 

Plans are currently underway to trap and destroy the beast - I have become consumed with hatred and revenge for his atrocities and am considering the use of weapons of mass destruction.  Stay tuned...

Welcome To The Family

Hello all! 

I am writing to you all from under my mosquito net in bed with a cold.  After over three weeks in Cambodia my body has finally succumbed to the assault on it by foreign germs and the drastic changes to my environment.  Unfortunately I was not well enough to go to my language and technical training sessions today, but happily Kate’s computer was close enough to reach from the bed to hijack for a few minutes. 

Its hard to “catch you up” on what has been going on for me over the past few weeks, but I will try to hit most of the high (and low) points. 

When we first arrived in country, we had a few days to get acclimated to our new environment as well as the climate of a volunteer’s life that Peace Corps Cambodia helps to set.  After those precious few honeymoon days of air conditioning, Wifi hotel rooms and the relatively cosmopolitan feel (and cuisine) of Phnom Penh, we were shipped out to our more rural and decidedly more Cambodian-feeling training province.  After only four nights there it was time to meet our host families and break up into even smaller training groups that were based mostly on what you would be doing in Cambodia for the next two years. 

Kate and I are both education volunteers – specifically she will be focused on training Cambodian (or K’mai – this is actually how the term “Khmer” is pronounced and is used when referencing Cambodia’s language, people and overall cultural institutions) teachers to be effective English teachers.  My job is to teach English alongside a HCN (or host country national for those not yet fluent in Peace Corps jargon) and to work on or establish various youth development projects as those needs present themselves to me over my two years of service.  To that end, approximately one half of our PST (or pre-service training) over the next two months will help us to become familiar with teaching practices and the educational system and nuances in Cambodia.  The second half of our PST focuses on language skills and cultural immersion, to which having and living with a host family plays a very large role.

Our host family is small and unique in comparison to our fellow PCTs (Peace Corps trainees, we are not officially sworn in until we complete PST – you follow?).  At the heart of our family is our “yea” or grandmother.  She has an older grandson who occasionally stays with us when not in Phnom Penh on our small “farm” that mainly cultivates rice in the paddies that surround our home.  We also have a sister, though the relationship to our grandmother is somewhat unclear, if indeed there is actually a familial relationship at all.  We do know that the majority of her immediate family lives just next door, but that our sister, named “Mom” (pronounced “mum” - try to keep up) is basically here to cook for us and tend to other jobs that our yea can no longer do...which really isn't much, she has got to be about 75 or 80 and I saw her pull out a huge clump of weeds the other day that I know would have given me issues - I also recently saw her walking to our fence with a handheld hoe in her hands to do who knows what.  These two ladies are both very sweet to us and cook incredible K’mai dishes that include tons of local veggies, fish, pork, beef, chicken (less frequently as it is expensive here) and the occasional oddball dish like fried ants or chopped up frogs.  I should say for the record that I have not had a meal here that I have really disliked.  Everything is served with rice in Cambodia, so we always must eat our food atop loads of white rice. 

During dinner on our first night with our new family, my host brother who speaks a little English, told me that after meeting my family and a few of the neighbors, my yea and her friend (we call yea 2) each ran over to each others’ house to tell the other that I bore a striking resemblance to the current King of Cambodia.  At first I was honored and touched that they were giving me such a lofty compliment so soon after meeting.  After some more broken English from our brother, I realized though, that the main reason I looked like this King Sihamoni, was because we share a similar balding pattern.  Oddly enough, I felt even more at home that my new family, much like my actual family, would make open jokes about my baldness.  I knew that this would be a good home and family for as long as we would be able to stay here. 

Kate and I live in a more remote part of the town/village than do many other PCTs, so we bike to our language and technical classes twice a day each is about a 4km round trip.  We often ride to children yelling “hello” or “what is your name?” – the extent of the English training that they have reached all the more reinforcing the need for Peace Corps volunteers to teach English.  I will try to write a post specifically about our “mission” here soon. 

One of my favorite stories so far involves this very phenomenon.  As Kate and I were riding home one evening, we passed a home that always has about three or four younger children playing out front, they always see us and they always yell to us, seemingly hoping to get a “hello” back from us in either English or K’mai.  On this particular night, however, one of the younger boys was relieving himself on the side of the road, as K’mai boys –young or old – often do.  Kate rode by first waving and yelling hello back.  As I watched I noticed that we caught the little peeing boy off guard so that by the time Kate had passed and I was just next to him he was so excited to see us that he whipped around to ensure that his “hello!” was also counted.  Understandably, he lost all track of his previous task and while turning, continued to pee in a 360-degree arc around himself, spraying himself, the girl next to him and anything else within range of his stream in the process.

Our house itself is pretty plush by K’Mai standards.  We have three rooms to ourselves – a large main room where we keep our things and have a small desk, a bedroom and a bathroom to ourselves.  A disclaimer though: bathrooms here are not what you might think.  Most bathrooms here have squat toilets, often a glorified term for “holes in the ground,” I’ll let you make your own mental pictures.  Often there is no shower, but a cistern that holds a hundred or more gallons of water that is used for showering and flushing via a bucket.  We lucked out and have a “Western” style toilet that you can sit on, but we have no running water, so we still flush by pouring water in after our business has been done.  We shower simply by pouring the often cold water over our heads and bodies and since we have no running water, we use mostly rain water collected by various apertures around the house that funnel into our cisterns and central holding containers.  We use the same water to drink, though only after we disinfect it with bleach to kill viruses and bacteria and filter it through a world-class (when it works correctly) water filtration system.  We have electricity to a minimal extent, but no AC or anything like that.  Our home is very open so mosquitoes and other bugs can come freely in through the windows or open vents in the walls – we sleep under mosquito netting each night.  We also have other roommates like the two-foot blue and orange gecko living in our foyer, smaller geckos that eat the bugs (so they live rent free) as well as some other more unwanted pests that have giving way to some memorable stories.  (See my upcoming post “The Rat” for more details.)  

Beyond these amazing new memories and, now, commonplace happenings around our new home, our lives are beginning to resemble something of a familiar routine.  We wake up early (though not as early as at first when we were unused to the rooster crowing at 4:30am) and usually begin our day by going to the market or a local restaurant for  a quick breakfast.  Breakfast is the only meal we do not eat with our host family as it is not a part of the contract Peace Corps negotiates with them and allows us the freedom to sleep in somewhat and eat what we please, though its usually still rice.  We go to classes in the morning and afternoons and come home for a shower, some lunch (and sometimes a nap if its really hot!), and some study in between the four-hour language and technical sessions.  At night we sometimes linger with other PCTs in the heart of the town to grab a snack and talk before coming home for dinner at six with the family.  Cambodia is no stranger to snack foods of all kinds.  I have already established myself as a loyal customer of the “fried banana lady” who now tends to give me a few free pieces of friend potato when I buy from her.  There are also tuk-luks, or smoothies that are blended with your choices of fruit, sweetened condensed milk and ice – so refreshing after a day with full humidity in the high 90s.  I have also tried the friend crickets that taste just like a crunchy piece of fried-ness, with maybe a slightly earthy or nutty flavor.  Kate and I have also drunk our fair share of the K'mai equivalent to Starbucks: strong instant coffee with a few tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk and sugar over ice…another great way to beat the heat while simultaneously earning countless new cavities. 

Anyhow, I plan to keep up the writing as often as I have something to talk about – I welcome comments and questions if you have them.  I’ll leave you with this – my first impression of the K’mai people are that they are a generally friendly sort that are as likely to regard an American as a celebrity as they would be to invite them into their home for dinner.  While the darker sides are most certainly present, as is the case with all peoples, it would be a hard case to make to say that Americans and Cambodians are so different that we should ignore one another or not help each other when one has the need and the other the means to assist.  I am excited to serve Cambodia, and my own country, while here to my fullest effort, but I am also truly excited that I get to teach our K’mai brethren about America and in turn, to teach anyone interested and reading my blog a little bit about the K’mai.