never thought i'd be used to..

Pork, rice and pickled veg for breaky in Phnom Penh

 I never thought I'd get used to eating rice and meat for breakfast, but the last few years I ate pork almost every morning! I never thought I'd get used to having cold showers, but now I'm fine with it (I don't like doing it in Aust though as the water here is so cold). I wonder if I can get used to other things too?

Bible school students sleeping area on college mission 

It would make life easier for us if I didn't mind sleeping on hard wooden surfaces. I always try to find a mattress to sleep on if I can, and i'm always so happy to get back to my own bed ("a proper bed" i would call it) after travelling in Cambodia. I can't imagine ever choosing to lie down on tiles or wooden planks to sleep, I sometimes have to do it but I don't like it.

Thats how it used to be with cold showers and Asian breakfasts... but now I would choose them.

You can tell its almost Water Festival by looking at our floor. Its covered in dried rice flakes that people eat at this time of year. In a few weeks heaps of people from all over Cambodia will be in Phnom Penh to have boat races and mark the river flowing the other way.

Arb

"What would a head be like without a body?"


"Oh, you mean arb."


Thats not what I meant actually, I'd never heard of arb before. But the way the Khmer girls were talking about it they seemed to assume I would know. Another expat in my Bible study group also recently learnt about this from her language helper. I think her language helper is also a Christian, and also talked about this arb as if everyone knows about it.


A women's head can come off at night and float around with dancing intestines and green glowing gallbladder.


Some links:

The krasue (or Kra-Sue) is the floating head of a vampiric female ghost in Southeast Asian mythology.

The krasue is called Pi-Kasu in Laos and Arp in Cambodia.

The krasue is the floating head of a vampiric female ghost. Intestines hang out of the ghost's neck and trail behind the head.

Some other bits and pieces about it here and here.  

Bodyless

There is a word for a head without a body in Cambodian language if I understood the girls this morning. 



We were doing a Bible study on Ephesians 1, near the end, about how Jesus is the head of the church which is his body. I think we were meant to be talking about how important that connection is, and what the relationship is between the head and the body but we ended up on a big tangent. 

They told stories from their villages about how at night heads of some people (only women I think) leave the body and roam around at night to find food. The organs like lungs and tummy go with it, and one organ lights up like a flashlight (a green organ- which one is that?). When the head is full it can go back to its body.



One of the girls in the group said a girl had to leave her village because even though she wasn't a bad person, she had this strange power. Also in the village the pigs were stolen because people were too scared to stay and guard them. And one girl was scared to go outside to the toilet at night so they had to build a toilet in the house.



They said there are lots of these kind of stories as many people were killed during Pol Pot time and didn't have a proper burial, so their souls are still here. 


I'll ask Kimsoeun about it tonight.

A Christian funeral

Kimsoeun's friend's dad died recently after being sick since around September(the last week and half he has been waiting for this). Kimsoeun left school after lunch and spent until dark in the family's district

When KS got back last night he said he was encouraged to see that the church members had taken over the preparations. I think one of the things that happens on the first day is the washing of the body, it's a community event. Often Christians end up having a Buddhist funeral as the relatives will start all the things straight away, but sounds like the church members were there already. The family (father and siblings) are not Christians, but they didn't protest. (I guess that must be hard for them, if they have certain beliefs of what needs to happen to the body to have a good next life.)



As well as church members I think pretty much all the students went as I and a staff member were the only ones at dinner last night.

Soeun went to preach there this morning, and will go back tonight for the burning of the body. When he's back at work today he'll be getting ready for the program of Jesus's death tomorrow- lots of death this week.


The coffin says : Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

His 3rd year sts were eager to know what he was preaching from, as he has set some of them homework to prep a sermon for a funeral.


Update Sunday 4th: After the Good Friday program we found out another family in the community had a family member die. Then a few hours later we found out two more people had died. So some of the students who had been busy with funeral programs all week have to spend this weekend, not resting has they had hoped but helping people with funerals.

Culture shock

There's lots of differences between Australia and Cambodia. Some things like the fact that Australian cities have parks and other outdoor spaces people can use and Cambodians ones don't. The people look different, the food is different- one Aussie wrote on her blog about what it is like to be an Aussie living in Phnom Penh. I keep meaning to, but she's done such a good job for now you might like to read her thoughts.

You can read a bit of it here, and a bit more here:
Talk about a change of scenery! From civilised afternoon drinks in our lush garden in inner-western Sydney, I found myself back in an airport where the electricity kept cutting out, experiencing that sensation of sweat dripping down your back within two minutes of stepping outside, and taking in the whiff of 'the black lake' (i.e. the open sewer around the corner from home) as the tuk tuk made its way through the crazy traffic home.

The last time I went to stay with a family in the province I noticed I was stressed about different things than in the past. When I first started visiting I felt disorientated as their house is quite different from anything I've ever lived in.

I don't know how to do things. For example, there are no sinks. So where do I clean my teeth, and where do they wash the dishes?

I guess I'm used to cleaning my teeth there now, and I can understand more of what people are saying, so those original stresses aren't so stressful.

After a recent visit I realised the stressful thing was that I have such different assumptions/ views etc.

Somethings I have grown up thinking are wrong- they do without thinking.
Things they assume are beautiful are actually really ugly to me.
Things that are normal to them are totally foreign to me.

In all these things they have no idea (as far as I'm aware) that I see things a different way, or even that there is a different way to see things. If they knew how I saw them I think they would be embarrassed. Which probably means that the way I live/act/thing is strange to them, so there must be things I do that they think are weird/wrong etc, and I'm not even aware.

There have been occasions when friends have pointed things out to me, but unless I have a friend to tell me I wouldn't know.

In year 11 and 12 I did a subject called "Society and Culture". I often think about what I learnt in that class "different, not wrong". It's helpful as I sometimes find myself wanting to tell people they are wrong!

I'm still not used to seeing people drop rubbish on the ground so often, so casually, so unashamedly.

Chinese New Year/ Valentines Day

Valentines Day is huge here, even the day before the streets are lined with people selling flowers, as you see in this photo.

Chinese New Year is also big here, there are lots of Chinese people in Cambodia and lots of other people who like Chinese things and/or like holidays (I guess). In the lead up to CNY I saw heaps of people buying and selling what looks like a bundle of sticks. I never saw this in China, I don't think they do it in the part of China I was in.

Also in the lead up to CNY there are lots of shiny red and gold things for people to buy to get ready for new year. Can you see these decorated pumpkins being sold alongside the usual produce?

Anyway, back to the bundle of sticks. It turns out they are trees. You can buy them and if the yellow flower blooms on new year it means you will have good luck all year.

You can see the tree in this petrol sellers house has been untired and decorated with red money packets.

This one in the house of the chemist shop was already blooming on the 13th Feb, so i guess they won't have good luck this year. There was an article in the paper about someone who had worked out how to control the blooming by the amount of water they used. So he knows he will always have good luck because he can make his tree bloom on the right day.

Shadow puppets (mum visit part 6)

We visited Sovanna Phum and saw a performance of drumming and dancing. We also saw these shadow puppets on display, an ancient art form SP keeps alive.

Visit to Preah Vihear Province

We left Phnom Penh at 5am, bright at early on Saturday(11th). No wait- it wasn’t bright yet, it was quite dark.

We spent the next few days with a small group of Christians who Soeun met last month (as mentioned here). Evenings and Sunday morning we spent sitting on the floor of someone’s houses singing and reciting Bible verses. On Sunday morning Soeun preached (although it was a much more informal sermon than he would preach in Phnom Penh).
We also ate most of our meals there as well- my back got pretty tired of sitting on the floor.




For Soeun the trip was a fun time, to see the people again. It was a break for him in between being at places where he has responsibility. We came from Phnom Penh where he works at the Bible school, then afterwards went to visit his family in their province.

For me it was an interesting and exhausting cross cultural experience. Everything was so different.


This type of transport is called a mechanical cow. Can you see why?

On the Monday we went out for the day to visit Koh Ker, I put some photos from that day, which turned out to be quite an adventure over here.
Preah Vihear province

Shower or Sarong?

I was talking to a Khmer girl about whether or not I would go with Soeun to visit a remote village. I'd like to see more of Cambodia but I think I'll find it hard, and as he is going with a team to do a job I'm worried I'll get in the way. I'm not sure if there are toilets and bathrooms there. I'm pretty sure that my back will be sore as the roads aren't paved, and I can't imagine how it will be after sleeping on a bamboo floor for four nights.

She used to live in a village when she was young, the jungle was her toilet and the river was her bathroom. I think also people wash by pouring water over them while wearing a sarong, so you can do it in your front yard rather than in a private room. She has since lived in a town so she is not used to doing that anymore. When she goes back to the village she finds it really hard.

She told me some Cambodians see expats here and wonder why they live in the way they do, with washing machines, hot water showers etc. She said some Cambodians think this isn't good. But from her experience (going back to the village) she said she knows that once you are used to something it is hard to live without it.

That reminded me of what Soeun said when he was living in Australia. Coming to Australia and seeing how easy life was like made him realise why it is hard for Australians to go and live in Cambodia. 

Wedding in Kampot province

On Saturday we went to a wedding far far away. Find out more here.

Water Festival

While I've been enjoying our water here, the rest of Cambodia is enjoying the Water Festival. Rachael joined in the fun and shared her experience here. From the roof here I saw some fire works, and I've seen some of the races on TV, but that's about it for us this year.

The guessed photo

Thanks everyone who guessed. (Click here to see the photo.)

What else is on the road in this photo?

Photo guesses:

Looks like a marquee of some sort. Is it some markets? If it is, there's not too many people around.

Ashfelt, and Is it a wedding? in which case there may be music to go with the picture

a Cambodian massage parlour
A Cambodian motel

School Animal stable Stalls Sweatshop Massage shop

I think the thing on the road is a marquee for a funeral. or maybe a wedding. That's what they had on a road in Thailand.

guess 1 - restaurants/ eateries
guess 2 - shops or something like that
guess 3 - toilets???

It is a wedding! People set up marquee in the middle of the road and the traffic just has to cope with it. This is also done for funerals and other gatherings. In these photos you can see the tables and chairs being set up.




When you arrive at the wedding meal you sit at one of these tables. When your table is full they will start bring food. If you don’t have enough people you won’t get served!

I usually go to a wedding thinking it will be a good time to practice my listening and speaking skills (in Khmer language). But usually the music is too loud.

It's so colourful- people wear brightly coloured clothes. And there is often silly string involved.

Girls get really dressed up to go to weddings, they might get their hair done at the hairdresser, paint their nails and wear full make up. I’m talking glitter, false eye lashes and everything!

This morning I was woken up by a wedding, not an unusual occurrence. The music and monk’s chanting is so loud. Where I used to live they kept the noise between 6.30am and 9pm. But in the part of town I live in now the noise can be going all night! I’m just hoping the wedding I can hear today is a one day event, not a three day one!

Want to know more about Khmer weddings? For more photos and stuff try clicking here, or here

or here.

Happy Birthday Mum!

I usually post a photo for birthdays but as I just put up heaps of photos I'll give you a Khmer story instead!

A rabbit went to a village. It saw an old lady carrying bananas on her head to sell. The rabbit wanted to eat the bananas. It thought, “ How will I get the bananas? I think I will lie in the middle of the road and pretend to be dead.” The old lady with the bananas on her head walked along the road. The old lady saw the rabbit and thought, “ It is surely dead.” She took the rabbit and put it in her basket and kept walking. The old lady thought, “ Today I will eat rabbit meat.” As the lady walked along the road the rabbit ate all the bananas. When the old lady got to her house she took the basket off her head. The rabbit jumped away very quickly. The old lady looked in the basket, all she could see was banana skin.

Wind photos link

If you want to see photos to go with what I wrote before go to the Expat Advisory site. They run a blog contest and I entered "What colour is the wind?". They added some photos! I think you need to go this month to see pics, as its a monthly contest. I notice they changed it to USA spelling, and the first time KSs name appears you can tell its been spell checked too.

What colour is the wind?

What colour is the wind?
“Ouch!” Kimsoeun my husband laughs at my cry of pain. He is the one who is sick, so why am I screaming? And why is he laughing?

He has had a headache for a few days, but that’s not the pain that makes me say “Ouch”.

To treat his headache he has asked me to “ gos khjol” his back. So I’m scraping a small round metal lid up and down his back until his skin turns red, using a menthol rub as a lubricant.

When his mum does it he ends up with two red lines down either side of his spine, and smaller rib-looking lines going outward from these main two lines. I’m trying to do the same, but I only manage a few small, faint lines here and there. He wanted me to scrape harder but I felt like I was hurting him.

Sometimes “ gos khjol” is translated as “coining” because you can use a coin to do it. Cambodia doesn’t have coins anymore, but Cambodians in Australia use coins and Vicks. It’s similar to the Chinese medicinal practice of “cupping”. Hot cups are placed on the skin until it turns red. Khmer people also use this method and call it “joop khjol”.

Once when a Cambodian husband in Australia “coined” his sick wife, he almost got in trouble because of it. The doctors who were eventually called thought he had been abusing her. After someone’s been “coined” it does looked like something violent happened to them. Red welts on the skin are surely a sign of something bad?

It seemed to be used as a general cure-all. Apparently it can help if you have a fever. “Coining and cupping reroutes the blood flow by opening up the arterials near the skin surface cooling the blood and in turn it can reduce fever.” (Dr Sheftall, American Medical Center, Phnom Penh Post, August 2007)

Sometimes when Kimsoeun has a headache he pinches his skin so hard it stays red for the rest of the day. He explained this is called “jup khjol” and a likened it to a massage. A pretty painful massage if you ask me!

Many Cambodians would feel that they can’t get better from their sickness if they are not “coined”.

The word “khjol” is also the word for wind. When I learnt this I understood why my neighbours kept asking me “What colour is the wind?” They would burst into fits of laughter and I would feel confused. The wind doesn’t have a colour, does it? But now I know the colour of “khjol” is red.

Village visit, the Year of the Rat is here and I’m a student of Khmer language and history!

Soeun recently went to stay in a village for a few days with some students (college mission). There were heaps of kids with lots of energy and it sounds like they had fun. It was hard to do studies at night, as they don’t have electricity. KS took our emergency lantern (like a big torch/flashlight); he said it was the brightest thing there.

The team thought they would get up early at 5.30 to pray, but by that time everyone else was already up!
One morning the students stole the camera and took a picture of Teacher Soeun asleep, as you can see here. You might be able to see someone having a wash in the background.

Village life is quite different to the city- as well as no power, they also don’t have toilets, and some peoples’ houses don’t have doors.

The church is new and small in this village. Actually, it’s more a handful of new believers than a church. They don’t have any leaders yet, and many of them can’t read. The team’s aim was to encourage them, and train them in leadership. As well as this they washed the kids’ hair. There were heaps of kids and apparently handfuls of lice!

Although not an official public holiday here, Chinese New Year is celebrated. Leading up to it I heard lots of firecrackers although not as many as I heard when I was in China. In China it sounded like a war zone, here there are spurts of bangs every now and then.

At the market there were special stalls set up selling lots of red and gold shining things, and all the normal products were more expensive. The day before the year of the rat began I was buying some uncooked rice and eggs from my usual seller. She asked me if I was going anywhere for Chinese New Year, and excitedly told me she was going out, in Khmer “dar layng” (literally: walk play, a walk for fun) to visit her mother. By that time some of the sellers had already shut up and gone home for the holiday.

Soeun was away that weekend on college mission, so that was a good opportunity for me to have a “language intensive in the province”, aka visit my in -laws. Because of CNY the bus was more expensive.

I stayed a few nights. Now they own 3 bikes, so I rode one to their church, and to the market and around town just for fun (dar layng). I also tagged along when they went to visit someone in hospital, and got to see the house where they used to live.

Two years ago when I first came to Cambodia KS took me to visit his mum on Chinese New Year too. In high school I studied recent Cambodian history (1970s, Lon Nol, Pol Pot), and I remember asking Soeun if it would be ok to ask his mum about her life during these horrible/strange times. As it was such an awful time for the whole country I was worried about stirring up bad memories, yet very interested to know what happened- especially to my then-potential mother in law. Soeun said she would be fine to talk about it- but I’d have to learn Khmer language first! At that stage I couldn’t imagine knowing enough Khmer language to discuss family history and war.

However, here I am two years later. I felt excited this year to discover I could understand enough Khmer to get the gist of what my mother in law was saying. She told me about how after Pol Pot time she left her baby Soeun with her parents in the village. She came to the town. It was deserted and there were many empty houses, so she started living in one and it became hers! I had heard those stories from Phnom Penh, but hadn’t thought about what might have happened outside the capital. (They sold that house years ago.)

Why were there so many empty houses?

At the beginning of Pol Pot time, everyone was driven out of the city. The Khmer Rouge were planning to make a classless society, everyone was to be a farmer. Being educated or rich was a bad thing. Between 1975 and 1979 and heaps of people died (some day 2 million). So the evacuation of towns and great amount of death meant there were many empty houses. As you can imagine that created land ownership issues, still a problem today. One of many problems as you’ll see if you click on book title in previous post below.

Holiday!

I just had an Aussie holiday in the comfort of my own home! A friend from Australia came to visit me for two weeks. It was so fun to have a holiday with her. We have lived together before so it was nice to pretend we were housemates again. It was great to have a friend to do fun things with. (KS and I haven’t had overlapping holiday time yet.) Here is a photo of Ang riding Sambo the elephant at Wat Phnom!



We ate lots of Western food (rather than rice and fish that I would normally be eating); travelled by tuk tuk (I would usually ride my bike or go by motor bike taxi) and went to places that tourist go. These included places of historical/ political/ religious significance to Cambodia. In this blog post you can see some pictures of the temples near Siem Reap. One of them is Angkor Wat, which is on the Cambodian flag.

If you want to read Ang’s (aka Gelato/Dave id dah) impression of Cambodia and about all the different things we did have a look on her blog “The Adventures of Ang”. Scroll down to find what she wrote in the last 2 weeks of January (15th-27th).
And look out for her photos.

Did you know...?

“If Cambodian cuisine could speak, it would be a polyglot hybrid of Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai, with a smattering of French and a heavy Indian accent.”

(Paul Brisby, SE Globe, Dec 2007)


There are at least 10 words for ‘carry’ in Khmer language. Each word is for a different way of carrying. For example, one word is used when you carry something on your shoulder, another for when you carry something on your hip. There is a word for when you carry things that are hanging from a long stick that is resting on your shoulders, and another one for when more than one person carries something.


Only about half the primary schools in Cambodia have toilets. As well as all the other reasons I think this would contribute to less girls finishing school.

(Phnom Penh Post Dec 14, 2007)

The annual roll toll in Cambodia is going up…
“RTAVIS reported 2,140 casualties in October alone, of which 136 were fatalities. Another 616 were severely injured compared to September, during which 121 died and 537 were seriously injured out of a total reported 1,818 casualties.”

(RTAVIS=Handicap International Belgium’s Road Traffic Accident and Victim Information System)
(The Cambodian Weekly, Dec 23 2007)

Christmas goes for 2 months in Cambodia! As Dec 25 isn’t a public holiday each church will decide which Sunday to hold their Christmas service. It could be anywhere from late November to early January. And as some services are in the morning and some in the afternoons a person who wants to visit different churches can go to many services. One year KS went to 4 churches in the same day and ended up sleeping the night at the last one.

“72% of the 1,016 Cambodians interviewed said they paid a bribe to receive a service in the previous 12 months, according to Transparency International’s 2007 Global Corruption Barometer released December 6. Only Cameroon … had a higher corruption score.”

(PPPost Dec 14, 2007)

“Inflation rises to 6.5% in Sept”
“While the complaints about gas prices soaring to 4,450 riels per litre continue, another crescendo of worries is coming from consumers about the hikes in the cost of food and other commodities.”
A food seller was interviewed and said she had to put the cost of her meals up as inflation was eroding all her profit.
(PP Post, Dec 13, 2007)

Language Progress!

Mostly, my days are filled with trying to learn more Khmer. This means I’m mostly struggling with unknown words and sounds. I’m often in environments where I’m straining to understand even just a little of what is being said.

Recently though, I had some experiences which made me step back and see the progress I’ve made this year. Let me share them with you.

One Saturday morning, around 7am I was walking along a road carrying a silver plate of grapes. As a wedding guest I was part of the fruit procession, there were two long lines of us walking towards the function hall where the wedding was being held. It was all very festive and colourful, accompanied by music and clicking cameras.

Walking in the opposite direction was another fruit procession. I looked over at them and realised I recognised many of the faces. They were from the church I went to last year; I hadn’t seen most of them all year. Afterwards I caught up with a few groups of them. “Che khmai chrarnna!” (Lit: know Khmer language a lot). They were all surprised at how much Khmer I know now. It felt much easier to communicate with them than last year.

A recent Sunday morning at Khmer church we sang a song. It was one I had tried to learn at the start of the year. I remember painstakingly trying to read each word with my tutor. They were all so hard to pronounce. All I could understand was “God” and “I”.

But at this end of the year the song is not so much of a mystery. I found, while I still didn’t understand every word, I could sing along.