And The Flood Gates Open

After a long weekend of our day off in rainy Kampong Cham and an almost unnecessarily long seminar day, we were all pretty eager to get home to our families and resume the routine we’d so tentatively set up for ourselves. I, especially, was looking forward to being able to do my morning run and wash a few articles of clothing.

When the van dropped us off at my house Monday night and I ran through the metal gates, what greeted me were not smiles and dinner but my sister sloshing through the first floor of our house in galoshes. Yes, she was sloshing through our house in galoshes. The entire first floor of my house had flooded due to some sort of monsoon that went on and there was ankle-deep water everywhere. Inside, outside, on the 10-meter trek to the outdoor bathroom, water was freakin’ everywhere. My bedroom is luckily on the second floor so nothing got destroyed but it is quite inconvenient that the only indoor bathroom has also flooded so for now I can’t do laundry, I have to take outdoor showers, and I cannot possibly exit the house with my bike without wading through what seems to be the shallow end of the Mekong.

Tuesday morning, I stood outside on my balcony overlooking my pond-home and noticed that the water was…moving? I looked a little closer and I realized that no, it wasn’t the water moving. There were fish. Swimming in the flood pond. There were literally fish swimming inside of my house, because the flood had caused the stream in the backyard and the house to become one entity. I wade around for a little bit and realize that not only are there fish everywhere, we even have a crab that’s dug itself a little niche underneath the stairs. Furthermore, my cat, who I’m still not sure if I’m allergic to or not, has taken to inhabiting the second floor of the house because she’s terrified of the water. This would be fine with me if she didn’t break into my store of socks and pretend like they were all chew toys and chewed holes in all of them before proceeding to hide them under my bed. If she didn’t serve the purpose of being the only semi-competent rat-catcher in the house, I would have long hurled her little calico body into the blazing sun of Cambodia.

Why semi-competent? Because there are still rats here. Not as many as there would be without the calico devil, but they’re here. Running through the rafters, shitting all over the place, befriending the bats who also happen to live in my house…sometimes I honestly feel like Mowgli from the Jungle Book because of the menagerie of critters I co-habitate with. Welcome to life in Cambodia, Christine. Did you think it was going to be easy? Hell no.

There is some solace to be gathered from this, however. I now have a great excuse to be able to wear my ultra-comfortable shower flip flops everywhere. Khmer professional dress? Sorry, I can’t walk through my home without soaking everything from ankle down so shower shoes are all you’re going to get from this gal. More than the shower shoes privilege, though, is the great honor of watching how Cambodians deal with animals. The cats are quite keen to do anything to stay out of the water so they’ve taken to climbing the windowsills attempting to escape into the dry haven my grandparents have set up for themselves. This greatly displeases my grandpa, and today I got to witness him stick a fist through the window and punch the cat, yowling, into the watery abyss below.

Later, at dinner, (mind you, we are eating outside, so our ankles are dragging through the murky flood water as we chew) the cats jumped onto our table in hopes of amending both their hunger and their constant dampness and an enraged grandma stretches out her wicked backhand and sweeps both of them, yowling again, into the water.

It’s not just my family that has a unique way of dealing with animals, though. Wednesday, my language group and I were studying at the wat (pagoda; it’s a religious building where people go to pray and monks live in the surrounding buildings). I have studied there once before and had the great pleasure of meeting the wat sow. She is gigantic and has a cleft hoof so she kind of walks with a limp while peeing and shitting everywhere. Once in awhile she’d like to mess with us and get really close, oinking and snorting, sniffing at feet and chewing on unsuspecting shoes, while we reacted with screams of fear/awe and started running in the opposite direction. Usually she would lose interest and go away within a few minutes, allowing us to proceed with our studies.

This time, though, she sniffed at Bill’s shoe and then proceeded to lie down right underneath our table. This table is the only table inside of the wat that’s big enough for a language group so we were all standing around timidly eyeing the sow and wondering if we could resume the use of our table without either her excrement or fondness for notebook paper disrupt us. The monks saw this and after getting their fair share of laughter in, one of them, maybe about 15 in age, walks over to the sow carrying what I presume to be the sow-beating stick. He strolls over nonchalantly and when he was right behind her, whacks her hard with the stick. She scrambled up squealing bloody murder and trots off away from the table. We thought this would be the end of it but the monk continued to stroll after her and beat her several more times with the sow-beating stick like it was no big deal.

Other news: the mini-flood has since dried up, and I am currently sitting in the comfort of the Mekong Hotel in Kampong Cham about to embark on a week-long site visit trip. We got our permanent sites (read: where I’ll be spending the next TWO YEARS!) today, and I am going to Kampot Province, Teuk Chhu district. It’s about 15 km north of Kampot town, which means I’m a short 20km from the GULF OF THAILAND. Google map it. And then imagine you were me. And then come visit me!

Oh, and another short note on letters: everyone else has been makin’ like Glen Coco and getting four candy canes every mail day and I have yet to get anything but the SD card from Stephen. Step it up! In return, I shall say a few more prayers in your direction next time I’m at the wat. Hugs and kisses!