Things I should have posted a while ago...

These past two weeks have been a little harder than most. The range of emotions I experience from day to day (hour to hour, really) are kaleidoscopic at best- there are peaks of joy and pits of helplessness as I learn more and more about my role as a volunteer in my village. Its tiring, to say the least. Much of this is due to the fact that everyday I seem to discover some new area where I see that the problems my community is facing are structural in nature, and that I can’t really do all that much to motivate change because its just not possible at this time. However, the peaks of joy come often and in such completely unexpected ways that it makes my service completely worth it. I’d like to share some of those in this public forum, and if you want to know about the structural problems my community faces, feel free to email me. I just prefer to keep this particular forum full of the positive experiences I have because sometimes I need to remind myself that the positive interactions I have far outweigh the negative or frustrating ones.

About a month ago I got pretty ill. I had a fever and a sinus infection- the works. I called my co teachers to apologize and let them know I wouldn’t be in class and to please teach without me. I immediately received text messages encouraging me to rest and drink a lot of hot water. A few hours later, my little brother was knocking on my door telling me there was someone downstairs to see me. Confused, I walked downstairs to see one of my co teachers with a bag of oranges waiting for me. I sat down (in my pajamas no less…), and he handed over the oranges with instructions to eat them right away because they have vitamins in them that will make me well. He also caught me up on what I missed that day in class, and offered to translate for me if I wanted to go see a doctor. After he left, I went back upstairs with my oranges and felt so blessed to know in such a tangible way that people care about me. About an hour later, I heard a strange male voice yelling my name from downstairs so I walked out my door to see my School Director bounding up the stairs with a bag of fruit in his hands. Now, you have to understand that this is an intimidating man who until that day had only seen me in sampots and collared shirts, and had only made small talk with me (very small, actually, since he doesn’t speak English) and here he is chatting away with me about what I need to do to get better and handing over fruit while I am sitting across from him in my pajamas. I couldn’t believe it. Just the idea that these two men would take the time out of their extremely busy days to come to my house and check up on me to make sure I was alright and didn’t need anything was incredible. Later that evening while I was eating some rice porridge my grandma made for me, she asked me if I missed my mom when I was sick. I said yes, and she said, “You tell your mother when she calls that I am taking care of you and I love you like a child and nothing will happen to you while I am looking after you” (or something to that effect…). I think the amount of love and care I was shown on that one day will be something that will help me get through some of the most difficult days of my service.

Now for another story of Katie and her misadventures with Cambodian animals:
Last Saturday morning I came downstairs to hang out with my grandma and help cook lunch (a two hour affair). My grandma looks at me and says what sounds to me like “blahblahblah foot blahblahblah shoe blahblah dog”. I can hardly ever understand what my grandma says because she has a really thick accent and talks really fast. I think, “huh, that’s weird. Why is my grandma talking about feet and dogs?” Then she changes the subject. About twenty minutes later my grandpa comes out holding one of my Chacos (a sort of all-purpose sandal that you can hike in, and, coincidently one of three pairs of shoes I own here) and says slowly in Khmer, “A dog stole your shoe this morning!”. I try not to acknowledge this and immediately begin my hunt for the lost Chaco. The shoe could have been anywhere, there is no such thing as a fenced-in dog in my community. After about half an hour I give up my pursuit on foot and am about to continue on bike trying to find the dog that fit my grandma’s description of “a large fat black dog” when my grandma says, “don’t leave, we will send out Sal to go look for the shoe”. Sal is the oldest of my little brothers, he is 15 and I could think of a million better things that he could do with his morning than look for the foreigner’s shoe, but despite my protests my grandma sent him on a hunt. Then she proceeds to yell at any passing boy she knew from the neighborhood that my shoe was missing and that they should look for it too. I told her to call of the shoe-hunt, and that I would find it eventually. She wouldn’t hear any of it, and wouldn’t even allow me to go look for it for myself. About twenty minutes later, one of the neighbor boys saunters up to the cooking hut with my lost Chaco saying the dog had dumped it behind his house. I thanked him about thirty times, and then went out to find the rest of the neighborhood boys and call off the hunt holding my lost-now-found Chaco in triumph.

A quick story about Sal:
Sal and his brothers (Nutt- 12, and Pia-7) were pretty shy around me when I first showed up at the house. A few days after I arrived about three months ago, Sal asked me if I would teach him English. I said of course, and then he asked me if I had a whiteboard. I didn’t, and he nodded and then didn’t bring it up again. Then, about a month ago, Sal wanders into the house with a small whiteboard and hangs it in the common area in the upstairs of the house. He shyly asks again if I will start teaching him English now that he has a whiteboard. I agree immediately. Later that afternoon my grandma told me that he had saved up for the whiteboard, and that cost him almost $10. That is a LOT of money in Cambodia, especially for a 15 year old boy. I was blown away- I had no idea he was that committed to learning. Now, I teach him and his friend Pisey English about five days a week in the early evenings after dinner. No matter how tired I am, teaching them is the highlight of my day just because they are extremely bright and very clearly want to learn.