I am so sorry for not having done much on this site for the last week. I have been busy every night with fellowships, students and dinner with some Vietnamese I met by going to their sweet shop in town last year. Actually, I have spent more time working on a student’s site than my own. He remembered most of what I taught last year and so now we’ve progressed into creating a site about his Indigenous group, the Krung. If you have any free time please go to this link…http://krungindigenous.sampasite.com/…He is using my photos and I have edited most of what is typed but otherwise, it is entirely his own thing! Now I will attempt to catch you up on the events of this past week in a condensed version.
I have begun teaching the Education Director of Ratanakiri Province, Phan Phirun, on Thursdays and Fridays for one hour in between IYDP classes. He mainly needs help with definitions and pronunciation, as he has been practicing English on his own for quite a while. Each time he has something new to ask me though, similar words that confuse him and need to be clarified. My students have told me that his son is an English teacher and at first didn’t understand why he would need help with English; but I explained that pronunciation is best learned from a native speaker.
Last Sunday, I visited one of my student’s churches that was started one year ago by a Khmer from Phnom Penh. The service was more Western then some of the churches led by Western Missionaries that I have visited. My student (Ravy) told me what verses the sermon would be on so that I could follow along a bit, since it would be in Khmer. Afterwards the Minister explained how he began the church and the English classes held during the weekdays. There is also a small collection of books about Missionaries in various countries that he encourages the young people to read.
Then Ravy, Sotha, and myself squeezed onto one Moto and zipped away from the ‘modern’ city towards more remote areas. I was glad to have left the helmet behind since it would only become a mini-sauna in this sweltering heat. The wind felt amazing after sitting in the sweltering church building all morning. Ravy steadily swerved down slim trails on the way towards his brother’s house in O Chum. He was hoping that we could pick up another Moto and not have to squish on one for the longer trip to Kalai however, the other one was out of petrol. Just as I was beginning to really feel the heat again, we hopped back on the Moto to bounce around the dirt roads towards Kalai.
We ended up taking a random stop to visit the waterfall called “starting love on” because, so many couples visit the site on “dates”. A date would be a large group of different “couples” that to anyone else just appears to be friends having a picnic together.
After about 8 kilometers on the dusty main road, we arrived in the center of Kalai and turned down a small side road that led to Sotha’s farm. His parents were at the other farm further away so I didn’t meet them but two of his sisters were there; one with her two children who couldn’t stop staring while we joked around photographing the house. Sotha captured nearly every inch of the house in pictures so that “I would not forget later after leaving”. Really he just saved me the trouble of documenting the area while everybody watches and wonders what this why this foreign girl is so interested in their common belongings. –I, myself, often think it is quite strange that I am snapping photos of their daily routine. I sometimes debate if I am intruding at all or just providing entertainment for the week.- After discovering that Sotha is the eldest in a set of twins, why they hang bamboo creations from long poles in the yard, and making the children laugh with hand puppets I was asked for the English terms of a few items around the house. Of course, I wrote down the Khmer and Krung forms of each word since I am trying to learn more of both languages for my next trip. We took a very steep hill down to some rice fields attempting to find a better view of the landscape but, I just wanted to climb the trees surrounding us. Sotha kept trying to stop me because many people fall out of trees here and are seriously hurt, he actually has a limp because of a tree related accident.
We returned to the center of the village along the main road to visit Ravy’s sister, brother-in-law, nephew and aunt; as well as Sotha’s brother who just happened to be buying rice wine from Ravy’s sister when we arrived. - The villages in this area actually remind me of being in Minnesota surrounded by relatives and a close community of friends nearby. It might be the farm lifestyle that creates this casual network of people who return often, if they happen to venture away from the core a bit. – We didn’t have much time to visit though as I had to teach another class at Anne’s in the afternoon.
After class, I had a dinner appointment with the Vietnamese who have been learning English with me while I learn a few things in their language. I will type more on them later though because, this has become increasingly more interesting.
I had a mostly normal day of classes on Monday, except for starting Mao’s website and teaching one NTFP staff member a few things on PowerPoint. Two more students showed up just as the website was getting somewhere; they were seeing what Mao was doing because he hadn’t come home after computer class two hours ago. We all crowded around my laptop to check emails and add photos to the website. James made some tea for all of us knowing that it would be a while before everyone left. He has been practicing typing a few times a week, after I finish other classes.
Tuesday I accompanied Mao to a village in O Chum where he would be teaching Krung children about their rights. Once a month different IYDP students spend a week teaching about children’s rights, a different village each day. Whenever some of them couldn’t stop staring I’d end up teaching them some hand puppets with little verbal communication. Just before ending the day Mao asked me if I could teach them an American song or game and he would translate for them. They wanted me to say everything in English first though. The easiest thing I could come up with was “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” so I sang it for them before going slower a few times with them. After running through it like a drill they were able to sing it slowly with Mao! Then we visited the other Dam in O Chum, which the children were going to swim at. Mao briefly explained the history to me as I photographed the area. As the children gleefully jumped into the dirty reservoir, I heard how Pol Pot used to have truck loads of people dumped in the water to drown. The Vietnamese had built the dam years ago but it wasn’t used for electricity by the Cambodian government until 1993, when the country finally gained Independence from the Khmer Rouge and Vietnam.
I will have to stop here for a bit because my students are returning for another lesson. Hopefully I will get a chance to add on more from this last week before heading out to Kalai again tomorrow.
