Bike Race!

Everything's going smooth at site. I'm finally getting some sort of a schedule down and meeting more and more of the students everyday. I have set up a fair number of office hours each week that students can come for English help and there have been a few that stop by to practice and ask questions. Last Thursday I helped a student for a half an hour or so and when getting up to leave he tried to pay me for the help. The school's are run a little different here because the daytime classes are free, but any private lessons are not. The catch is that some teachers withhold the important information from the day classes, thus forcing the students to pay for private lessons in order to get the curriculum that is covered on the national exam in May. Frustrating, I know.

This coming weekend I will be traveling up to Siem Reap to partake in a bike race fundraiser at Angkor Wat. I'm going to ride in the short 30K road race (on my PC junker of a mountain bike) on Saturday morning. It should be quite the event and I'm really looking forward to it! If anyone wants to sponsor me, visit the website at: http://www.villagefocus.org/angkor_marathon/
The organization putting on this event is mostly involved in anti-child trafficking and land mine causes. If you feel like sending over a few bucks, go to the website and click on the "Sponsor" link. Click on my name and follow the steps. Thanks in advance to anyone who donates!

Mr. Thanksgiving

I envision dozens of ways to kill him while lying under my mosquito net every morning waiting for dawn. I think about the most fitting death for that damn rooster. Beheading would be nice, but death by boiling in a pot of water would help with the hassle of plucking the feathers. Contrary to popular belief, roosters don’t crow at the crack of dawn. What a perfect world it would be if that were the case. Roosters crow before dawn, after dawn, mid-morning, in the evening, and undoubtedly will crow after the apocalypse.

This morning (Sunday morning and also my day off) he started in around 4:00. I’m reminded of that Alan Jackson song that my mom likes “Its 5:00 somewhere.” Presumably, the rooster wants to let me know that somewhere in the world the sun’s coming up, even if it’s still early morning in Cambodia. I think the entire rooster population of SE Asia is in an alliance to thwart my plans of sleeping until 6:00 on Sundays. Maybe one of the members lives on the coast of Vietnam and looked out east across the ocean this morning to see the tiniest sliver of light on the horizon. From that moment on it was a race against time to spread the news of the sun’s arrival to the roosters in Cambodia.

I heard them way out in the distance across the rice fields. Gradually the crowing became louder as my consciousness slipped out of pleasant dreams and back into hell…aka ‘the land of the perpetually crowing roosters.’ I waited in anticipation, knowing that the inevitable event that begins my every day was about to happen. There it is! That $#@ing rooster is sitting on the fence 2 feet outside my window crowing away. I looked out the window and he stared right back at me as if to say “I’ll stop crowing when you can catch me barong.” I told him that he better watch himself because Thanksgiving is less than a week away and I have yet to see a turkey in Cambodia. That rooster now has a name; Mr. Thanksgiving. Fortunately for him I will be away from site over Thanksgiving, but Christmas is just around the corner.

Happy Turkey Day everyone! I wish that I was there eating pumpkin pie with you all. Please send terrible thoughts about death and suffering to Mr. Thanksgiving. The family’s only been serving these weird eel fish the past few weeks and it’s put me in the mood for a drumstick.

Then again, without Mr. Thanksgiving around I’d miss the beautiful sunrises in Cambodia. Maybe I’ll just have to learn to tolerate him for two years. By the way, Sunday marks my fourth month in country. It’s flown by and time speeds up every day. Suksabie (good health) to everyone back home, miss you all tons.

Harvest time

Farm life has always enthralled me. I like the idea that one could conceivably grow and raise a good portion of the food that one family needs at home. It’s a world that I have little knowledge of, but much curiosity for. While I don’t currently live on a farm per say, just being in Cambodia puts me up close and personal with tomorrow’s dinner. My family has chickens and ducks that roam around the yard eating the rice scraps and whatever bugs they can catch. My evening commute home from school is often sluggish due to the traffic jam consisting of water buffalo driven carts, cows, and motos. All around me are miles and miles of rice fields.

I arrived in Cambodia during the planting season, so I’ve now seen one whole rotation of rice growth. I love riding my bike through the rice patties in the afternoons attempting to explore every road, path, and cow trail around my village. In August and September the feilds were nothing more than a billion brilliant green shoots sticking a foot tall out of the mud. Now that the raining season is coming to a halt, the rice has started to seed out at the top and turn gold. From a distance it looks vaguely like a wheat field in America (minus the palm trees).

On Tuesday my farm life curiosity got the best of me. I’ve been bothering my host family for weeks to teach me how to harvest rice, and they finally gave in to my requests. In the morning we headed out to the family’s plot about 4 miles from the house. My host dad rode his moto there while I followed close behind on my bike; peddling furiously to keep up. Upon arriving we were greeted by about 20 day laborers, who are paid 8,000 riel ($2) per day to cut rice by hand. I think this is the standard pay rate for harvesters, but it’s a wonder their families eat at all. You won’t find a Cambodian farmer with any body mass to spare.

First I’ll explain the rice harvest attire. Long sleeves are a must for sun protection, as is a brimmed hat. Most people wear mid-drift pants or roll their pant legs up since you stand in about 8 inches of water and mud all day. The women all wear kormas wrapped around their necks and faces. Nobody wears shoes since they’ll get sucked down in the mud after two steps anyway. You can imagine my hesitancy in kicking off my flip-flops and wading through the same mud that the Peace Corps nurse has warned us about. Most of the fish my family feeds me are caught from the rice fields, which are also habitat to snakes, frogs, mice, rats, birds and small crabs. Walking through snake water is not my idea of fun, but when in Rome…

To harvest, a big group of people stand side-by-side and make their way across the field while cutting the tops off of the plants. In one hand you grab a big bunch of the rice stalks and with the other you cut the top 8 inches or so with a crescent shaped metal tool. After gathering up a big handful of plants, you neatly pile them behind you. Someone follows behind the group of cutters and gathers all the small piles in one location.

The tools are incredibly sharp and you have to be careful to not cut yourself. I learned that lesson the hard way. I cut my hand without knowing it and suddenly I was bleeding all over. Guess I wasn’t ‘cut’ out for farm work in Cambodia. Thankfully it was just a shallow cut and didn't need stiches.

The woman who was teaching me how to harvest was great. She kept stopping to pick crabs out of the mud with her feet. Then she would shake the mud off and stick them in her pocket…presumably for lunch. It’s amazing how fast a group of people can clear a field. I was hypnotized while watching the workers’ movements as they made a path across the endless fields. My favorite part of the harvest though was the sound of people walking through the rice while their tools made the cuts.

Tuesday was a very good day.

Step right up folks...

Surprise, surprise this week is a holiday. Needless to say I’m out of school for a week. In Colorado they say the sun shines 300 days per year, but in Cambodia there seem to be about 300 holidays, festivals, or celebration days per year. I think my school has had one full week of classes since starting at the beginning of October. This is the week of the Water Festival: one of the main Khmer holidays. There are boat races and all kinds of celebrations in Phnom Penh. Sadly though, I’m not allowed to travel to PP because Peace Corps rules put me under a kind of house arrest for the first three months of service. No traveling for me, except to Siem Reap. So here I am hanging out at site wondering what I should do for 8 days. I’ve already ridden every road within a 15 mile radius of my town, scrubbed the bugs off my floor that reek like the market’s fish stalls, sewn up the holes in my mosquito net, finished my third book in a week, and I even sat on a rock and looked at a tree for an hour. You’ve got to make your own fun in rural Cambodia or the boredom will kill you.

On Sunday I returned to my home around 5:00 after a long bike ride, showered, and was hanging out waiting for dinner. Suddenly someone turned on the world’s largest speakers up the road from my house. In the distance I could hear Fergie’s “my humps” in Khmer and figured someone was throwing a party for the festival. My family invited me to go to the Wat with them after dinner, and of course I accepted. It’s not very often that I’m outside past dark here. Usually the gate’s locked up by 7:00 and I’m under my mosquito net by 8:30.

Upon arriving to the Wat, I was shocked to find that a carnival had been set up complete with music and lights (quite a feat when there is no electricity to speak of). I have no clue how they got the rides to my village and assembled without me ever noticing. The Thais had to helicopter computers in to my school, but somehow the Cambodians brought in a Ferris wheel by truck. Imagine the most dilapidated circus from the 20’s and you kind of get the idea of what this carnival was like. I started looking around for the bearded lady or the man with tattoos covering his body oblivious to the fact that everywhere I walked a crowd gathered. I was looking for the freak show, while the Cambodians had already found theirs.

At first I watched the kids’ ride which was similar to ‘the swings’ at Eliche’s. You know, the ride where it spins really fast while you sit in a chair suspended by chains to a large metal frame. Well, the kids’ version had a mismatch of various plastic toys to sit on (a frog, a faded and cracked school bus, etc). There was a fan on top of the whole contraption that I presume was charging the battery that powered the lights. This was amusing and all, but the Ferris wheel loomed in the background begging for my attention.

I decided that I just had to ride it. In the back of my mind I wondered if I got hurt would the Peace Corps add “no riding sketchy Ferris wheels at Wats” to their list of rules. Let’s find out! I dragged my little host sister over there to ride with me. For 1,000 riel (25 cents) you get to ride the Ferris wheel straight out of hell for 5 minutes. The whole thing was powered by a gas engine hooked up to an old truck axel that spun a bunch of belts. No doubt it was handmade and had seen better days. I had to hunch down and crunch up my legs just to fit inside the cage. My particular cage/seat thing, lucky number 10, didn’t have a latch on the door. So there I am holding the door shut, my knuckles turning white from the death grip, and I’m coughing up a lung thanks to the smoke from the engine down below while a crowd of Cambodians gather round to watch the barong ride the Ferris wheel. At the end I jumped out thankful to be alive and thought, “Once is enough.” That wasn’t in the cards though. My students thought it was the most hilarious thing that their teacher rode on the Ferris wheel and soon they all wanted to ride with me. After a few more trips I had to quite and explain that the fish soup I ate for dinner combined with the motion was making me sick.

I then wandered over to the food area to see about buying a funnel cake and ice cream. Ha-ha, yeah right Rebecca. There were fried bananas being cooked over a small fire in the dirt…I declined. The darts were next. There was this large wooden structure set up and balloons were put in between the boards. A ‘safety net’ was strung up behind the contraption, but a lot of the kids kept putting their faces right up to the net watching the crowd throw darts. Thankfully no one lost an eye that night.

So that was the carnival experience. Sure there weren’t popcorn stands, safety ropes, or bearded ladies. But who needs those things when police with assault rifles slung over their shoulders walk around while the best internatinal dance song of all-time plays in the background…ah, the Macarena.

Surreal Lunch

Some of you may already know this (and I don’t want to brag to my fellow PCV’s), but my high school is nothing less than beautiful. It was a donation from the princess of Thailand to the Cambodian people and has no physical resemblance to Cambodian high schools. I do however face many of the same challenges as other volunteers despite the new buildings and neatly manicured gardens. Email me about that if you’re curious. Back to the point.

One of the Thai teachers here who serves as the day-to-day contact with the Thai government invited me to lunch with the school’s project manager and all of the other “big wigs” who work for the princess. Of course I accepted! Eating yummy food on dishes encrested in gold with the Thai royal emblem while watching soccer on a massive TV was not what I had envisioned for my Peace Corps experience. But I certainly wasn’t going to complain while sipping down that ice-cold Coca-Cola.

The project manager and I chatted for most of the meal and he told me a lot about the buildings and the obstacles they faced in placing this massive school out in rural Cambodia. They actually helicoptered materials in from Thailand (like computers and tech equipment) because the roads to the site are absolutely horrific. He also invited me to come to Bangkok with the students who receive scholarships to study at universities in Thailand. Sounds great, but I doubt the Peace Corps would okay that trip. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to explore the sandy beaches of Thailand on my own dime over vacation next summer. Enjoy the snow everyone….I’m off to drink a coconut. Life’s rough here :)

Siem Reap synopsis: I bought the town out of peanut butter, drank a latte a day, ate Indian food twice, Mexican once, and maybe had one or two beers. It was a gluttony fest and just what I needed. Halloween was fun. I wore a rice sack and went as “white rice.”