Cultural Chaos in Cambodia

Sua S’dey my friends – a warm hello from Cambodia where I am now twelve hours ahead of home rather than eleven. To everyone (or anyone?) who has been checking this blog frequently, I apologize for not having posted anything about Cambodia since I arrived almost a month ago. There has been a lot going on, and not just in the jammed packed schedule kind of way. Adjusting to a new country, one radically different from Thailand and much less luxurious or socially rewarding, has taken a mental toll on me. For the first two weeks I was feeling overwhelmed, frightened and uncertain of my safety and wellbeing on a day-to-day basis, desperately trying to find a happy medium between appreciation of this immersive experience, and acceptance that this is not an easy environment, and I do not always feel okay.

Cambodia, being the post-genocide-inflicted, developing country that it is, makes for quite an intense place to live, study and travel. This reality, heightened by the shocking and disturbing US election results of recent, temporarily wilted any of my usual motivation to blog. Mainly because I didn’t want my lingering defeatist attitude to be underlined in everything I wrote, as there have been a lot of positives throughout this second chapter of my trip. I just needed to be in the right headspace to talk about them.

So. Here I am, back at my journaling/blogging game. Currently, I, along with my two wonderful peers who also made the transition from Thailand to Cambodia (the other twenty stayed in Thailand for the rest of the semester), are on an island called Palm Beach, which is a remote little getaway off the coast of Sihanoukville, which is about four hours South of Phnom Penh where we live. It’s Monday and this long weekend in Cambodia is the annual Water Festival, which isn’t actually so annual since it hasn’t happened in four years due to a stampede that killed like, four

hundred people last time it took place. Tons of citizens from the surrounding provinces (countryside) flock to Phnom Penh for this celebration, making it madly chaotic and dangerous. Practically everyone we know in the city was either getting out for the weekend, or taking refuge in their homes for 72 hours. So, given that this was the one long weekend where our schedule permitted us to travel, and given that Sihanoukville and Koh Rong are known for their white sandy beaches and backpacker nightlife, we naturally decided to flee the city. And it has been well worth it. Just a few minutes ago, a buffalo (or bull – its unclear) gallivanted past us on the beach as we lay tanning and reading our books… one thing I’ve learned from traveling in completely foreign places? Expect the unexpected.

We get home tomorrow and by the time I post this it will probably be later in the week because I feel like I have so much to catch you up on, not to mention the electricity and Internet on this island only come on after 4pm, and half the time I barely have wifi at my house. Oh the joys of the abroad life.

I am currently living with a Khmer family (correctly pronounced Kah-my), right in the heart of the city, Phnom Penh, which feels much smaller and more congested than Chiang Mai (if that’s even possible). I absolutely adore my family; they might actually be my favorite part of this experience. I have three sisters, ages thirteen, twenty and twenty-four, who are all impressively fluent in English. Amusingly, their names are only one letter apart from each other’s, which makes for constant confusion and apologies in the house, even from their parents. I can only assume that this naming decision has some traditional or cultural implication behind it, but for whatever reason I haven’t asked. Maybe this is a good conversation starter for dinner tonight. Another fun fact: when stating their full names, Cambodian’s put their last before their first, and on official documents they put their last name in all capitals. So for example, if I were to write my name down Khmer-fashion it would read: HOOPES Amy. Middle names do not exist, which has honestly made me question why we have them in the States. Someone please - what exactly is the point?

Apart from my sisters, I also have Khmer parents. However, neither my mom nor dad speaks much English. And by “much” I mean they can say, “Hi, how are you? What is your name? I don’t speak English very well. Thank you. Bye.” So basically, either I had to learn to speak Khmer FAST, force my sisters to translate everything for me, play charades on a daily basis, or accept that I

would never be able to have a full conversation with my parents. Naturally I chose the first option, and luckily I’ve found Khmer to be much easier than Thai, probably because there aren’t any tones to worry about. Thai has so many words that mean like, five different things depending on the way you pronounce them. Khmer is a bit more straightforward, although some of the pronunciation is difficult and the English-to-Khmer transliteration game can certainly be a struggle.

Nevertheless, I’m catching on quickly and can now have a full, basic conversation with my mom without ANY translation help. Which is awesome because she’s hilarious - an agreed upon fact between all my friends that have met her. She’s an incredibly kind, generous, charismatic and hardworking woman who takes care of me like I’m one of her own daughters. Her cooking is always delicious, and she is always, always, always trying to overfeed me because she believes my thinness equates to malnourishment. I think her favorite thing to say any given time I walk into the kitchen is, “Neak nam bay?” meaning, “you eat rice?” which is another way of asking “are you hungry?” To which I usually reply, “not really,” to which she usually says, “you sit down” and proceeds to bring me a plate of food. Better to be uncomfortably full than food insecure, am I right? In a nutshell, I'm kind of obsessed with my Cambodian mom and I could go on about her for hours, but in respect of my American mom who I love and miss very, very much, and in respect of your time, I won’t.

I am not as close with my Dad as I am with my mom and sisters, mainly because he works incredibly long days, and is very shy about using his English. My mom is a full-time housewife so I spend a significant amount of time with her each day, but my dad has always already left the house by the time I wake up, and he often works six days a week. This is actually fairly common for Khmer people, as the concept of “weekends” is not the same here as in the US. Furthermore, many people can’t afford not to work six or seven-day weeks, especially if they have a large family and/or have come to the city from one of the provinces just to be able to provide enough money to send back home. I have met many people here – tuk-tuk drivers, waiters, construction workers and food vendors – who work eight to ten hours a day, seven days a week.

My sisters also work super hard and are usually out of the house by the time I come down for breakfast. The youngest is a freshman in high school and goes to a public Khmer school in the morning, and a private English school in the afternoon, or vise versa depending on the time of year. The twenty-year old is in college and attends two universities, one for English and one for law. There is no such thing as residential college in Cambodia, so students attend school during the day and come home to their families at night. It is also very normal, and traditional, to live with your family into early adulthood, likely until marriage. Hence, my oldest sister, who works as a liaison for the Foreign Ministry of Affairs, also still lives at home.

Assuming your family can afford it, as a teen growing up in Cambodia it is basically expected that you will attend two schools through high school and college, because in order to become “educated,” or in other words, eligible to work a decent paying job, you must be able to speak English. This is because the majority of competitive businesses in Cambodia are foreign-based due to the complete restructuring of the local economy in the 1990’s post Khmer-Rouge and Vietnamese-occupation. One of the aims of the Cambodian government in its slow recovery from genocide has been to create partnerships with powerful international players so as to improve the economy and the country's reputation. However, many foreign companies and NGOs have selfishly taken advantage of Cambodia’s vulnerability to further their own development. The result has been a foreign monopoly on the city’s infrastructure, to which only a small percentage of the Khmer populace – those wealthy and well educated – can actually benefit.

This lack of college housing in Cambodia explains why I am living with a Khmer family and not in a dorm like I did in Chiang Mai. I study at a university here three days a week, which is only a fifteen minute walk from my house and really resembles more of an office building than a campus - at least from my American perspective. I am taking a Khmer Language and Khmer history class, which has also included perspectives on art, local culture and current day politics. The rest of my classes are left over from Chiang Mai and I’ve been finishing them online. This has presented an interesting school dynamic compared to what I’m used to, and if I’m being completely honest, I haven’t found it very satisfying. I enjoy the professors I’m working with in Phnom Penh, but I find my online classes to be quite tedious and somewhat irrelevant to my day-to-day experiences. I also wish I had had some choice in the classes I’m taking. For example, I would to explore some of the current issues within the Khmer education system in an academic setting, or research in depth some of the social conundrums of the country. I also feel it would be beneficial and rewarding to be taking classes with Khmer students, given that the university we attend is English-speaking, and that it is only the three of us foreigners in each class. However, I have to accept the reality of my schooling here, and in the grand scheme of things I know it isn’t so bad. After all, I'm privileged to even have access to a college education, let alone to have the space to complain about it.

On the other two days of the week, I have been working for an organization called the Advanced Center for Empowerment (ACE) which offers educational and occupational opportunities to disadvantaged youth from the countryside. Among its many projects, ACE provides dorm style living accommodations to students from the provinces who have received funding to attend a university in Phnom Penh (higher education cannot really be found outside the city which is a huge, huge problem, as you can probably imagine). One of my peers is actually living at ACE, and we recently taught a women's health class over the weekend, which was mildly hilarious because of the language barrier and the fact that we were discussing sexual health, consent and protection with a group of young adults from a culture where sex before marriage is fervently looked down upon. Apart from this class, I have mainly been helping ACE with office work, which entails proofreading official letters and documents that have to be written in English. When I am able to, I also volunteer teaching English in one of the local slums, which is always a difficult place to be given the extent of visible poverty lining the street. But regardless of the children's life circumstances, I am always blown away at how receptive and joyful they are in class. There is truly never a dull moment or a single behavioral issue; the student's gratitude is palpable.

I have to say, the strangest, and most unsettling aspect of living in Phnom Penh has to be the amount of caution one must take when moving through any public space. Given Cambodia’s status as a developing country, and the fact that there is such an imbalance between the upper and lower classes (about 1-2% of the population are wealthy and the rest are, to some degree, impoverished), and the fact that - due to an incredible amount of corruption - this country doesn’t really have a middle class, the likelihood of encountering theft, crime or violence while walking the streets is quite high. As soon as we arrived in the city, we were warned to take all our jewelry off and to keep our phones in our bags any time we were in public. We were also warned never to wear shoulder bags, as they can easily be yanked off your body by a passing motorbike(!?). Every day on my way to school, I carry a durable hiking backpack that I strap firmly around my body, always making sure each buckle and zipper is firmly done up before I venture outside. Don’t even think about wearing headphones, either, as you will be an immediate target. Even on tuk-tuks people have been known to get their stuff stolen since these little wagons often don’t have protective bars around them (some drivers have recently begun to make their tuk-tuk's more safety proof to attract customers). I also never, ever wear revealing clothing; no shorts, no skimpy tank tops or low-cut shirts. To even walk alone as a female past nine p.m. is a dangerous game, especially in quiet areas. Usually, I’m already home by this time or I take a tuk-tuk with my friends. Otherwise I would probably give my host mom a heart attack.

This might all sound extreme and scary and over-exaggerated to some, but this is how I’ve learned to live in this city. There are still tons of nice Khmer people here, but like I said, there is also a lot of poverty and a lot of corruption. The current group in power of this country, The Cambodian People’s Party, basically has control of everything from the police to the courts to the military to the entire legislative branch of government. So if bad things happen and the CPP doesn’t take action, than nobody can, and nobody will. On top of poverty there is also a huge lack of resources for mental health, domestic violence, substance abuse, health care -- the list goes on. So people are coping with these issues in whatever ways they know how, which often include stealing and inflicting harm on others. Just a few weeks ago, one of my friends got her iPhone stolen off the back of a motorbike. A couple – boyfriend and girlfriend – drove up alongside her and her driver, and the girlfriend shoved her backwards while the boyfriend snatched the phone out of her hands. It happened in about ten seconds, and both bikes were in motion the entire time. Even though my friend yelled for help and many people on the street tried to throw stones at the fleeing couple, they managed to get away with the phone, which - we were told - they probably sold within the next hour. My friend was actually lucky she didn’t get into an accident. Many people will get pulled off their motorbikes when they’re being robbed, which can result in serious injuries.

Aside from theft, the streets are also dangerous because the traffic is insane. I was told that ten years ago, hardly any cars populated the streets. But now cars are being imported left and right and the roads aren’t built for them or the capacity of vehicles that filter through the city each day. Many of the streets are narrow and unpaved, and even those that are paved are lined with potholes. There are also tons of street vendors crowding the perimeter of the roads aside cars that don’t have designated parking spaces, so walking from one destination to another always feels like a game of Frogger, rush hour or not. Here is a video of Phnom Penh traffic – if you feel so inclined to watch it, just picture me walking through this mayhem. It's safe to say that after living here, it will be a breath of fresh air to climb inside my beautiful blue Prius when I get home and drive the incredibly calm and controlled streets of Massachusetts.

When I started writing this post about six days ago I got very sidetracked and started detailing the entirety of Cambodian history, which turned into a long academic-y post that didn’t actually provide that much insight into my daily life here. So I decided to change it up, but that being said, I think the history of this country is so, so, important, especially the events of the last century shaped by the diverse agendas of the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese and the United States. Cambodia, being so small and so removed from contemporary world politics, is far too often overlooked by those who haven’t stepped foot here. And I really, truly, desperately want to change that, somehow, in whatever small way I can. So I’m going to start with a separate post about this country’s history because I think it warrants its own space (and it's quite lengthy – but fascinating!!) I plan to have this up by next week, so stay tuned! Due to the fact that I’ve been embarrassingly bad at posting recently, I’m going to forego my thoughts about tourism for now even though I said I would post about this in my last piece. Hopefully this piece will materialize on the blog at some point in the future.

In the meantime, if you are curious about Cambodia’s past, and how it has shaped the present life that I’m currently immersed in, you can check out my most recent Facebook album where I’ve included ridiculously long captions on each picture to give you a sense of what I’ve been up to, and the story behind the different sites I’ve been visiting.

Other than that, this is it for now folks! A very Happy Thanksgiving to you all and please eat lots and lots of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie for me. This is my first Thanksgiving away from the family and I am already missing it like crazy.

Oh, and as always, please feel free to reach out to me at any time. My social life is a little lacking here so any and all messages are warmly and gratefully appreciated :)

All the best,

Amy

Cheers,

Amy