The weird things you wish for...

Today I was thinking about a bunch of things that I wish I could have that people typically take for granted. These are things that I would really not care about if I were in America, but over here I think about it quite often. I think about these things so often that I've forgotten all the things I thought about except for one: a desk. I would really love to have a desk and a chair that is made for an adult. I would like to be able to walk over to my desk and set my computer down on it. I would like a chair where my entire butt has room. I would like a window that allows light to enter by the desk. Instead, I work on the side of my bed with a small plastic chair made for a five year old. I'd like to be able to lay my head on it as I used to watch my fellow bio lab workers do in exasperation. On some days, the only way to cure frustration is to be able to lay your head down on the cool hard surface of your desk. It's a clear sign to any passersby that today is not the day to bother you. If I remember any of the other things I would like I will be sure to update this blog post.

(Part 2) A day in the life...

Yesterday, I started my post about a day in the life. This will be the second half of my day starting with LUNCH!

Lunch: sometimes the most exciting part of my day. As you may remember from my last post I was really really hungry when I left the health center. Sometimes I daydream about food. On that particular day I remember daydreaming about how awesome it would be if I could have fried rice for lunch. Nothing fancy, just some rice, oil, garlic, and maybe a little egg. I rationalized that fried rice was unlikely to happen because my mom only makes it when she is reminded of it in some way. I would say she makes fried rice maybe 4 times a year.

But, this was a special day. Not only did I get egg fried rice, but I also got 2 fried duck eggs in addition to the usual salted fish. Eggs are awesome. I try not to think about the cholesterol as I bring each delicious yokey spoonful to my mouth. The yoke mixing with the fried rice and doused with copious amounts of siracha sauce (thank you Kurt!) is almost more than I can handle. This day is a two plates of rice kind of day. I try really hard not to eat the whole pot of fried rice on my own and, as usual, my willpower of steel prevails. There is still rice left at the bottom of the pot for others that may come later...

The rest of my afternoon is not so eventful. After lunch is usually nap time. I like to open my window and lay on my bed to read. Usually, my room is as dark as a bat cave, but around noon to 3 the sunlight is in the perfect spot. I get abruptly woken up from my nap by a fellow PCV who needs to have some questions answered about her Small Project Assistance (SPA) project (I'm on the deciding committee).

1pm: check my emails and update myself on the outside world. I just started a new class of 7th and 8th graders english, but some of them don't know how to read yet. The other day they didn't recognize the word 'you' and I decided to scrap everything and start from the beginning. I've been looking online for some resources and trying to cobble together a curriculum that's challenging, but also covers the basics. In Cambodia, you formally start english class in school in 7th grade, but somehow kids are expected to already know how to read and write a completely foreign alphabet. By that age, most middle to upper class kids already have a firm grip on basic english due to years of private lessons. The kids in my classes may not have that history since my classes are free and get a wider range of students. I've noticed that the 8th graders are hugely different from the 7th graders and I'm trying to figure out why. It's been about 5 months since school started and the 7th graders can't read yet (but they just took their midterms). It seems implausible that the 7th graders would catch up to the 8th graders in 5 more months of the same type of teaching. My theory is that in 7th grade, everything is new and it's ok not to know stuff, but by 8th grade the kids that can't catch up just stop trying. They've learned that they can't learn and so they don't come to class.

I spend an hour or so on the lesson plans and then I try to revise the SPA handbook one last time before the new PCVs get to hear about it at a training in two weeks. The rest of my time goes into India. My research on India takes up all the time until my 4pm class. It's such a vast place and it seems logistically hard to plan a trip there, but I'm tryin'.

4pm- One hour english class at the school down the street (it's next to my HC). Today we're trying to master pronouns and the to be verb. Asking basic questions about names and forming appropriate answers. They've definitely retained more than I hoped from the day before and I spend about 20 minutes going over the alphabet and some phonics. Trying to work on their pronunciation and give them a feel for the sounds of the letters.

I get home around 5:30 and it's already time for dinner! Dinner is fish soup, which is not so delicious, but I eat all the red pepper and tomatoes. Veggies don't usually come in the soup so I savor each bite. I also get some cold cut up fish cakes. When I say fish cakes I mean that they take whole fish and sort of mash it up in a machine and then make cakes with them (bones and all). This is not an industrial blender so you can still feel the bones in the cake. It's not bad. I've just grown a strong aversion to fish bones since I arrived here a year and half ago.

After dinner, I change into my sarong and take a shower/ brush my teeth. I see that some animal has pooped in my bike helmet, but it's ok. The poop has already dried and I just scrape it out. It's about 7pm when I get back to my room and reply to a friend's email. Around 7:30 I get into bed and read by headlamp. 8:30 Lights out and fall asleep.

(Part 1) A day in the life...

Having only about 6 months left in service has turned many of the questions people ask me from the topic of what life is like in Cambodia to what I'm going to be doing after Cambodia. My answer to this question is well rehearsed and if you ever get the chance to ask me you'll know that you weren't the first person to hear it. Another question I get fairly often is, "Are you used to things yet?" People seem to assume that the longer you live in Cambodia the more normal things seem to you. That is just not the case. I may have a better understanding of why certain things happen, but I still retain the ability to look at my surroundings and say, "That is quite odd."  What has changed is the length of time I retain that reaction. When I first arrived in Cambodia, everything seemed at odds to what I was used to and it used to be overwhelming. Nowadays I just think, "that's weird" and then I move on. People have asked, "What's the craziest thing you've seen so far?" and I honestly can't even recall though reading through this blog would probably help my memory a bit.

To test this theory I decided to really record a day in my life (I did that yesterday). You can judge for yourself.

February 09, 2012

5:40am- I wake up to my host parents talking extremely loudly. Check my cellphone for the time and reluctantly roll out of bed knowing I gotta be out of the house on my run in 20 min or I'll be late for work. I grab my chamberpot and toothbrush and walk out to the bathroom.The moon is full and bright yellow in the sky.

With a mouth full of toothpaste, my mom informs me that a woman died from malaria in Thailand. They had just brought her 20 yo body back and she left behind a small son and a husband. It's not until she mentions it that I notice the wailing khmer funeral music playing in the background. Yet another death to a preventable and treatable disease.

I go into my room to change into my running outfit, basketball shorts and large t-shirt, and unwrap a precious peanut nature's valley bar. It's been so hot lately that the bar has melted onto the wrapper. I always eat my bar out in front of the house because any crumbs will attract ants.

I go for my usual run up a wide dirt road. The weather's not so bad today. The strong wind keeps down the clouds of dust that get kicked up everytime a car, truck, van, or moto passes by. When I get back I eat 2 bananas and stretch.

Time to do laundry! My house only has 5 out of the usual 10 people that live here this week. It's the perfect time to do laundry since there's no competition for the clothes line. I pick out a couple items from my laundry bin and put them in a small metal basin out back. As I start dumping water on my clothes a lizard pops out! I'm hoping it was the lizard that's been living in my room for the past 1.5 years.

As I scrub my clothes I slap at a couple mosquitos that are biting at my legs. Somehow I manage to capture one alive on my wet finger. I can see it's swollen red glowing belly and it's small legs stuggling to get free of the trap I'l got it in. It's wings are too wet to fly. I smash it against the water container.

After laundry, it's time for a shower. Unfortunately, my host family used up all the shampoo in my jumbo shampoo bottle. So, I had to improvise with some body wash. I brought this body wash with me all the way from America and it's only half used up. It's only for special occasions or days I need a pick me up.

I change and bike to work up the highway about 500m. It's a tough ride because the headwind is insane and I realized that I need to get both bike tires pumped. As I slowly make my way past a woman biking with what looks like a 50kg bag of rice on the back of her rusting bike I yell at her, "Wind strong!" and she replies, "Yea!"

When I get to the HC, I park around the side so kids/adults won't mess with my bike during the day. They just love to change the gears. The first patient of my day is a mother with a 9month old baby here for a measles vaccine. I weigh the baby with the mom and record the weight in the child's book. The baby hasn't gained much weight over the last 6 months and is mildly malnourished. Apparently, the baby does not like veggies in her rice porridge. I suggest to the mother that she adds some water flavored with mashed fermented fish to get rid of any bitterness from the veggies. This is a trick I learned at a training I went to a few weeks earlier and it works...

The second baby is only 1.5 months and is a healthy weight. This is usually typical if the mother is available to breastfeed. Most healthy babies here start to go downhill around 6 months when weaning is supposed to start.

By 8:30 am I'm already finished with 2 liters of water.

I get a call from the PC med. officer. She apologizes for calling me at 9:30pm the night before, she knows it's late for us. But, the real reason for the call is to followup on my kidney stones. They started acting up over the past week, but it seems like the worst is over for now. After the call I walk around the HC, but it's almost empty already. The theory is that everyone has gone to Thailand for work. I see two girls waiting and I give them some coloring pages about food groups (we only have 3 in Cambodia). One of the girls is reluctant and her mom tells me that her daughter doesn't know how to color. This is actually a pretty common response. Most people think that coloring is a skill you learn when you start school...

One more mother comes in with her 9 month old and the baby is also mildly malnourished. She seems to be giving the right foods, but not the right quantities. The kid get one egg split between 2 meals in his rice porridge.

One of the midwives has to go to the Operational District (25km away) to drop off a book and she asks if I want to go along. I decline on account of not having my moto helmet with me. Then we talk about how much and where she got her cute blazer made. It only cost 2.50 to have someone tailor a blazer for her.

I go to the "office" which is a semi-clean room with a bed and a desk in it. It also has our brand new printer that no one knows how to use. As I write, flies are flying into and out of my hair. A little girl keeps peeking her head in and runs away everytime I look up at her.

I leave the room and talk to a mom who brought her 7.5 month old baby girl. The girl is cute and chubby and gets a firm grip on my shirt sleeves. Apparently she's had a cold for over a month, but I don't see any signs of illness.

In the waiting area, the new TV is on and showing the usual khmer dubbed Korean soap opera. By 9am there are no more patients coming in. I watch the pharmacist give women birth control injections. The first mother I spoke to today is still waiting for her child's vaccine.

Since there aren't that many patients I just walk around the HC. One patient stops me and tells me she sees me run past her house everyday. We chitchat. I see the woman in the back who has just given birth eating. She's wearing the usual outfit for women that just gave birth: wool hat, scarf on top of hat, shit, long sleeved shirt over the shirt, sarong, socks, gloves, and felt blanket. Next to her is a plastic bowl of steaming hot water.

9:15am: I'm starting to get hungry because I decided to skip my typical bowl of noodle soup because I'm paranoid that all that salt will irritate my kidney stones. The 2+ liters of water I've had need to leave somehow so I make the 100m walk to the bathroom in the back of the HC. I subconciously steer around the piles of cow poop. On my return, I pass by one of the consultation rooms. It has 3 grubby looking kids squating on the floor. They are all staring at each other and periodically sticking out their tongues. The two adults are focused on talking to the nurse.

At the reception desk, a man from an NGO that we work with walks in. He asks if we're going out to the villages. Everyone suddenly looks confused. They deny knowing about the program. He walks out a defeated man.

10:15am- No patients left except for the woman in back recovering from child birth. I smell cigarette smoke and walk back there, the husband immediately exits.

A grandma walks in. The pharmacist asks her a question and the grandma points at her crotch and says some words I don't understand. Immediately afterward, the Khmer cover video of Lady Gaga's Telephone comes on the tv.

A mom then walks in with her daughter and turns to the nurse who is trying to refill our water container. She starts rooting around in her daughter's hair looking for something and her daughter is near tears. There are about 5 people staring at her because this is all going down in the middle of the waiting area. Later, she turns her daughter around to show everyone the blood on her pajama top that obviously came from the cut on her head. Someone jokes, " If you can't find it it must have healed already." Not funny to me, but hilarious to everyone else, except maybe the girl. The mom asks, " I put tiger balm on it do we need to clean it?" Tiger balm is a cure all in this country.

10:35am- HC staff begin to leave on their motos. The HC director arrives on his moto with a bag of eggs. He walks around the HC with the eggs and then leaves with them. I'm still not sure why. I get asked by someone about how many months I have left, blah, blah, blah. I take this opportunity to make my escape. While putting on my bike helmet I hear, "Should I put more tiger balm on it?" coming from a loud motherly voice in the HC.I bike back home hoping for a really delicious lunch.

Noise complaints

In college, noise complaints were the bane of every party's existence. One noise complaint and campus police would come investigate. Warning lights would be flashed on an off. Red solo cups abandoned recklessly by the underaged. Pyramid formations suddenly became rectangles or a zigzag. Glass bottles hidden in old laundry. The only thing you couldn't hide were the 50 people packed in a 2 person dorm room.

These days I find myself wishing I could pick up a phone and call those police. Actual noise laws have the following benefits:

1. Stops the neighbors from singing offkey karaoke at 6am.
2. May stop your host sister's 6am alarm from going off at 5am.
3. Preventing surround sound weddings (4 simultaneously in a circle around your house).
4. No more need to worry that walking past the speakers will burst your eardrums.
5. Funeral music from three doors down will not make you want to rip your hair out.
6. No more groups of drunk men banging on a drum and singing in chorus at 3 AM. (outside your house)
7. The Wat outside will not be blasting dance music into your room until midnight on Monday and Tuesday nights (my bedtime is around 8pm).

Right now, I'm sitting in my room with my earplugs in. The difference between now and before the earplugs is that now it sounds like someone closed a door on the crazy rager going on next to me, but it's not enough to keep my bed from shaking.

oh life...

Some interesting things happened to me today...

1. Apparently today and tomorrow are very good days to get married. Weddings in Cambodia are typically 2-3 day affairs where they blast music ALL day to let everyone know what’s up. So, this morning, and by morning I mean 4am when the stars are still fully visible in the sky, 3 weddings started up. They were each in a different direction from my house so in effect I had weddings in surround sound.
2. Puppies do not like Khmer wedding music. At about the same time the music started the 3 puppies at my house started howling like mad. They made their sad puppy cries all morning starting at 4am. My mom thought it was because they were too infested with lice. Which leads to the next interesting thing...
3. Spraying puppies with RAID. I was standing outside my house and I saw my mom poking at a puppy. I squat down for a better view and she begins to explain to me how the puppies have too much lice and she decided to deal with it by spraying the puppy with Raid. In this country, dogs are not really pets. You may have one that you feed the leftover rice to and these are the puppies of that dog. So, there are pretty much no vet services, no flea control, no doggy baths, etc. The puppy that was sprayed with Raid had handfuls of dead dog lice falling out of its fur. Before the pesticide spray the dog was white and black. Now it was white, black, with brown spots. Unfortunately, I think the Raid had some negative neurological side effects which should be expected when you spray a 5kg puppy and if you know how to read the label. But, my host parents do not because the label is written in Thai. By this afternoon the puppy had stopped having the shakes and seemed to be lice free.
4. Lately my Health Center keeps being invaded by chickens. I always thought that they were the neighbors chickens. One thing I learned in Cambodia is that chickens are not smart. For example, chickens will wander into rooms in the health center, forget how they got there, and get stuck in the room unable to find the door. This poses a problem when you are constantly trying to herd them out. This morning I asked the pharmacist where these chickens were coming from. Turns out they are the Health Center Director’s chickens and he’s raising them at the Health Center.
5. One of the three weddings is the wedding of the Health Center’s receptionist. I’m pretty friendly with the receptionist since she’s one most available to answer my general questions, she understands when I speak, we spend a lot of time waiting for patients together, and we’re about the same age. This wedding is also the reason I am not taking any vacation days for New Years. This morning I was chatting with the pharmacist again. Turns out the receptionist is getting remarried. As in, she got married 2 years ago, divorced, found a new guy, and is getting married again. When I heard this two thoughts popped into my head. The first was, “Oh, that’s what my host mom was trying to tell me this morning.” The second was, “Wow, that’s fast.” According to my host mom, her first wedding was arranged and they did not love each other. Also, the groom had to pay 3000 bucks as the bride price. This second wedding, the groom is not as handsome and he only paid 2000 bucks. 

Getting used to each other

Recently, I was talking to someone and they asked me "Who got used to the other first? You or your host family?" (not exact wording). I replied, " I think we're still getting used to each other." It was weird because part of me was hesitant to admit that. I've been here for almost a year and a half and I should be use to it by now, right? I should just understand how everything works and be one with the culture. Part of our bi-annual report to Peace Corps includes a question that asks us to self-rate ourselves on how integrated we are. I think the options are: Not integrated, Somewhat integrated, Integrated, and very integrated. I think most people are not really sure what that means. I think maybe you can tell the difference between someone that is NOT integrated at all and someone that is VERY integrated, but other than that it's a totally subjective measurement. And yet, I feel guilty admitting that, after 1.5 years, I am not an expert on Khmer language and culture.

I still do strange American things that make my host family raise their eyebrows at me and they still do weird Cambodian things that I then blog about. For example, today I was sitting in my room on the comp and I smelled/heard someone spray painting something. It was really close to my window, which I thought was strange because it wouldn't be somewhere you could put a bike or car or something. So, I looked out my window and my host brother was spray painting his jeans black. I guess that's the secret to keeping your black jeans from fading in the Cambodian sun. A few hours later I went to a Health Center meeting that was supposed to start at 1:30pm. At around 3 pm one of the commune chiefs shows up. At about 3:30 pm, 3 village health volunteers stroll in yelling really loudly about why they were late in the middle of the meeting. They saw nothing wrong with it and the only person that did anything about it was my midwife. She 'shushed' them really loudly from the other side of the room.

I've learned a lot in the last 1.5 years, but certainly not an entire culture.

Are you a feminist?

So, my official COS date is August 3^rd!!! That means that August 3^rd is the first day that I am ‘allowed’ to go back home to America and the last date of my service here in Cambodia. My exact plans for what follows August 3^rd is up in the air, but I hope to end up in India or Nepal somewhere around there. A lot of this is dependent on other factors like med school interviews, potential jobs (if that’s at all possible), and friends/family. But, it’s good to finally know a date.

Recently, I was on facebook and one of my friends had posted on her status “I’m not a feminist, but...” What followed was an article about women in the work world and how in some cases they are making more money than men. This is a very general summary of the article and should not be taken as evidence of anything. What struck me was not the article, but the fact that my friend  felt that she needed to preface posting it with “I’m not a feminist”. My response to her was “‘You’re not a feminist? What does that mean?”

Until maybe my Junior year of college I had no idea that the term “feminist” had negative connotations. To me, feminism is defined by each person. I think that if you generally believe in the ability of women to make choices for themselves then you are a feminist. You don’t have to believe that all women need to work or that women shouldn’t wear bras. You just need to believe in women. You just need to believe that a woman can make the choice to raise kids or run for president and that they have the ability to do either or both. It really does not seem like a radical idea to me. When I first heard that people were scared to be associated with the word feminist my first reaction was “Why?”

Why are people afraid to be a feminist? Coming to a Cambodia has brought feminism to another level for me. The wall between male and female gender roles here is so solid that it might as well be made of steel. Every day I see women come into the health center with their children. They finally found time outside of harvesting rice, cooking, cleaning, and any other work that needs to be done to bring their child to the health center. Very rarely do men come with their children or wives to the health center. In my host family, the boys get to go play soccer, school, see Siem Reap, but the girls stay at home. They go to school and they study, but they need to make the rice first. Every morning all the women in my host family pick up a broom to sweep and every night they do all the dishes. I don’t think I have ever seen one of the boys do their dishes and I’m not sure they know how. I’ve seen families where the eldest son got to go to school and becomes a nurse, the youngest son gets to go to Siem Reap for high school, but the middle daughter stopped going to school after grade 8 and stays at home to cook. These gender roles don’t just force people into certain jobs or livelihoods, but they affect behavior. Generalizing about girls in Cambodia, I would say that a lot of them are scared. They never get permission to leave the house or stay out past dark so they rationalize it into a fear. This fear self-perpetuates and keeps them at home and in turn creates parents afraid to let their daughters out of the house.  If you lived in Cambodia, would you be a feminist?

Maybe the term feminism is too limiting. Maybe part of the reason why people don’t want to associate with it is because it neglects men and some people picture “man haters” when they hear the term. Maybe I should call it anti-gender rolism to appeal to the masses. I guess sometimes people use "gender eqaulity" or anti "gender disparity", but what does that really mean? Mutual understanding between men and women, good communication, is crucial to subverting gender roles. Women alone may be able to start change, but to have worldwide sustainable change the other 50% of the population also needs to buy in. Men are also trapped by gender roles,  “oppressing is oppressive to those who oppress as well as those they oppress” , trapped in the cycle perpetuated by those in power (Frye 1983). If everyone feels oppressed by oppression then why don’t we stop? Because those oppressing still have an advantage they don’t want to give up. Over the course of a number of months I did a big project involving a girls club. As a large part of my work I ended up having many formal and casual conversations with people in my community about the girls club, gender, and related topics. Eventually I realized that many Cambodians, especially men, either don’t consciously see the gender roles in their society or they don’t see it as a problem.

I had a number of people ask me why I only had a girls club and not also a boys club. To me it was obvious and it was also obvious to the two male PCVs I worked with. With limited time and funds why would I choose to create a boys club when all of Cambodia is pretty much a boys club? However, to Cambodians it wasn’t so obvious. The purpose of the club was to teach girls the skills they would not learn at school: self-confidence, team work, leadership, career seeking, project planning, advocacy, anatomy, sexual health, etc. Many of these skills are taught to boys. 

“Women and disabled individuals are encouraged to apply” was a statement printed at the bottom of a job advertisement. Someone reading that in America might not think much about it. It’s a pretty standard statement that we see a lot. Someone in Cambodia once told me that he had no hope of getting the job because they would hire women first. Interestingly, he did not include disabled people in his lament. I asked him how many women and how many disabled people he saw working at this company. His answer was 2 and 0. Out of the 6 staff members 2 were women.  He ended up making it to the final round of hiring and they chose another man over him. One day I asked someone why are there no female english teachers at our school. His answer was because the female teachers all get chosen to work at NGOs or school in Siem Reap (which are larger and pay more). He felt there was unfair selection because they mostly got to work there. I don’t think he realized that of all the men that graduate every year only a handful of women do and that handful  probably had to be first in their class for their entire lives in order to work in Siem Reap.

Hearing people that think that these gender roles are a way of life and that nothing needs to be changed is almost more frustrating than seeing the gender roles themselves. Women are too scared to change, men don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, and nobody communicates with each other. So when someone says “I’m not a feminist” I ask “Why not?” What are you scared of?