Maybe I'm just a girl

It’s all going reasonably well over here. The weather has been great: pleasantly warm. I have been meticulously wearing a hat when I’m out and about. It only cost me 50cents or 2000riel. Everything is fairly dusty. There isn’t much grass here in the city and the street we live on is dirt road. The dust is very fine and is very hard to keep out of the house. It isn’t very noticeable till you look on the bottom of your feet and see that they are filthy. My jeans drag in the dirt so they get grotty on the bottoms. I rolled them up today so they didn’t drag but I looked uncool so I probably won’t do that anymore. ;-)

Our meals have been quite good: especially since we didn’t have to cook them. It costs us $1.25 min each for a nice little meal here. Cheaper than chips! Miriam and I have finally got enough tools from the market to make our own meals so for the last four nights we have eaten in. We bought fruit and veges from the market and half-polished rice from an organic place (just as cheap as normal rice). We do have to be careful buying our food in the market though. Some people splash water over their fruit, vege and fish to keep them looking fresh when in reality they aren’t. Most of the condiments and little additions we have got from the Lucky Supermarket down the road. We drool every time we pass the snacks and confectionary aisle. What we wouldn’t give for some Toblerone or choc chip cookies! Unfortunately they are now classed as a luxury because we aren’t working and the good stuff costs a little more (generally) than in Australia because it has to be imported.

The good side of this is that we are only eating essentials and cutting out the snacks and oily, fatty stuff. We do have a little Cambodian lady on the corner of our street that sells hole-less donuts. Yes they are deep-fried but they aren’t sugared. Very yummy! Only 200riel each (about 5cents). Most things are so cheap around here… it appeals very much to my penny-pinching nature. I am learning more and more what a good deal is and that certainly helps when bargaining for a ride with a moto (motorbike taxi) or a tuk tuk driver. They roll their eyes with a grin at me and plead the cheapness of the ride but take me for my offered price. They’ll rip you off if they can.

One thing we’ve all noticed is that time is cheap here. People get paid for the things they make, not the effort they put into them. It doesn’t seem much incentive to do a good job; but I guess people wouldn’t buy the goods if the weren’t up to standard. As we walked around the clothes section in the market, Miriam and I saw people hand sewing intricate beadwork onto lovely formal dresses that would sell for about $30.

It seems to us that the cheapness of time also means that people don’t respect our time. It is fairly common for a contact to schedule a time to meet with us and simply not turn up. No phone call for explanation, no apologies, just… us waiting around for them to turn up. It is especially frustrating when we have planned our time around their appointment when we could have done other important things during that time. It certainly correlated with some rules of politeness we learnt in our Cambodian lessons:

1. Do not let guests know that you are busy when they visit (so it’s not rude to just rock up to someone’s home?)
2. You shouldn’t refuse an invitation to sit down or join a meal (even if you have just dropped in to tell them something before an appointment?)
3. If you are eating when guests come you must invite them to eat with you (even if they show up unannounced at teatime?)

Some other interesting cultural values are:

1. Don’t make loud noises in front of guests (what is their version of loud? Anything they can’t talk over?)
2. Don’t bargain before 9am (is that for grumpy morning people?)
3. Women take care of the housework and children (intimating that men don’t)
4. Men should not cook or wash clothes (is that because they can’t or to prevent futile nagging?)
5. Children must not blame parents for wrongdoing but parents can blame children for wrongdoings (parents get away with everything!)
6. You can ask anyone about their age, salary and personal business (which we would consider to be impertinent and nosy)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ridiculing their culture. I just hope they make allowances for us because their whole life philosophies and approach is so different to what we are used to and we are bound to take false steps.

We have plenty of teachers. Everyone we meet is willing to tell us how to say things or what to do because we are so willing to learn. Every time I say ‘art-tey’ (no thanks) to a tuk tuk driver he grins in delight, too charmed at my speech to solicit me anymore. James and Michael have been finding themselves doing impromptu English lessons during sessions with contacts when problems with comprehension come up. This probably suits some contacts as we suspect they are coming here more to better their English than to learn about the bible. Perhaps we are being cynical.

Every Tuesday afternoon we are to head out to the LCDI school (pictures below) and teach some free English classes there. The setup is very pleasant there and the students are all very friendly and gather around to goggle at Toby (and probably us) and ask us many questions. They live, eat and bathe in quite primitive conditions. They sleep on mats on the ground in wooden huts sided with palm fronds that they built themselves. The water for washing clothes, bathing and cooking with is brown and frankly quite suspect. They have a small filter that all 240 students drink from. They have just built a big hall that a student engineered: his construction experience? “I watched people building and just learnt.” Nevertheless, James has approved the structure from his fount of knowledge and experience.

The school is basically funded by each students contribution of $16 a month which pays for the site rental, food, electricity, everything. They have no other funding beside donations which are few and far between. At the moment they cannot even afford to pay for the renewal of their local NGO license as it would cost them 5 tonnes of rice or about $1000. Nevertheless they are all cheery and grateful for the opportunities the school brings them. Hopefully we can help teach them English so that they have better job prospects when they leave the school.

I shall now sign off with a Cambodian proverb:

“Don't let an angry man wash dishes or a hungry man guard rice.”

Miranda