"Preah Anrudh Preah Neang Ossa"

Last weekend we went to a Khmer classical dance performance in Phnom Penh. And in true tourist fashion we thought we'd try ourselves.

Nasty Arm

I woke up one day with a light rash that looked like the outline of a butterfly on my arm. And in about a day, it progressed to looking like it does in this picture. It was amazingly symmetric and really weird- it didn't itch but was a little painful...it actually felt like a burn. Although I didn't burn myself. It became quite the conversation piece because noone, Khmer or Western, seemed to have seen anything like it before. The nurse at RDI gave me an antibiotic shot, and put me on a steroid and antibiotics. We've never figured out exactly what it was...but think it was some bacterial skin infection. It looks a lot better now. We'll see what kind of battle wound remains.

As I’ve mentioned, during the first few weeks of the project, most of my days were in the field. Our project sites are about 1.5-2 hours from RDI so that is a lot of van time. Sometimes it is nice to have this time to take in Cambodia, but with the quality of the roads and the duration of the trips, it can get pretty uncomfortable. So, not unlike what many of us would do, I put my foot up on the dashboard as a change of riding position. In the van I promise doing this is not as obvious as it would be in a car. Despite the fact that I had been riding like this for days, one particular day my staff started to laugh about it. I asked them why they thought it was so funny, and they responded that, it was okay for me to sit like that because I am not from Cambodia, but that Cambodian women do not sit like that unless they are gangsters! I bet you didn’t know I lead a secret life as a gangsta.

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So I had been told and would claim to know that American and Cambodian cultures are so completely different, so I shouldn’t assume that I know much of anything. But as much as I know/knew that, it’s hard to remember it all the time, especially when it comes to really basic things. So my classic example of this is gesturing for someone to come towards you. We would do this with our palm facing upward, opening and closing our hand, or maybe doing a sort of side wave. Well, here…that’s what you do to call a dog over to you. And that’s what I would so nicely do to my staff. Sweet. Instead, your palm should be facing down…now I know.

I remember sitting in a sociology class last semester as my friend, Kate, did a guest lecture on culture. She did an amazing job…mixing facts and stories with ease. She also gave examples of how gestures mean different things in different places! Of course now I remember that!

Here are a few old stories that I’ve been meaning to post…

Once the project officially started, I was in a field a lot for the first few weeks…helping to recruit villages by meeting with village leaders, and then recruiting households through community meetings and household visits. I must admit that I often feel a bit useless when I’m in the field because I can’t speak Khmer. This means that I need a translator to talk to the villagers, and because most of my field staff have limited English, I need a translator to talk to them too. Wow, it takes soooooo much more time to get anything done when everything that is said is translated back and forth. There is still stuff I can do in the field, but I now can really appreciate the fact that learning the native language is necessary to be truly effective. So anyway, the community meetings are largely run in Khmer because I’ve done the spiel so many times that I pretty much know what is being said without actually understanding the language. During the meetings I try to be super attentive and smile despite not knowing what exactly is being said…and I laugh now and then when appropriate (I can’t quite explain how I know this…context clues I guess). At one particular meeting, in the village of Trapeang Kampleanh, many of the women (women and young children attend the meetings because they are often the ones working at home during the day) started laughing and so my project coordinator relayed the joke to me. (Let me tell you, most of the jokes that Cambodians tell are NOT funny…well, at least they aren’t funny to us. I’ve had to work on the art of fake laughing.) But in this particular case, what they said was actually funny, so they got a real Erin laugh. And they thought it was so great that I laughed the same way as them. And they were right. There are so so many differences in our cultures, but there are few things…smiling, laughing, crying…that have no barriers. And it’s pretty amazing what you can communicate with those simplicities.