Language barriers and the power of a dog-beating stick

A few days ago, the K4 volunteers of Peace Corps Cambodia, through tearshed and a few watery goodbyes, finally made our momentous move into permanent site. You know, that place where we’re going to spend the next TWO YEARS. I like to tell myself that I already made a good first impression on my family and what little of the community I saw during my site visit and I cling onto that delusion by thinking that all I’m going to have to do is build on that fantastic first impression once I’m here.

Well, I’m here. And, to be honest, building on that first impression hasn’t exactly come second nature. I think it might have something to do with the fact that I can’t hardly speak the language. I can’t fully let my (or what I think to be my) effervescent personality shine through if all I know how to say is “My name is Christine, I come from America, I am 22 years old, and my favorite color is purple.” And thanks to language training, I can ask a whole host of questions whether they’re about the Health Center or the village or even what’s for dinner, but to be able to catch and comprehend the answers that are given are proving to be the real challenge. Volunteers are encouraged to find a language tutor at permanent site to continue language training and most do, at their schools. They recruit a semi-fluent English teacher to teach them Khmer which is no big deal because all of the volunteers prior to the K4 Health Education volunteers have worked at schools. Me? I have yet to find the school in my village. No one at the health center speaks much English past “hello”.

Luckily, though, at permanent site, all I’ve got is time. I spend three hours (if that) every day lolling around the health center while trying not to get in anyone’s way and the rest of the day is mine to do whatever I please. I’ve been using my time very productively thus far by chilling in the family hammock with Ian McEwan’s “Atonement” (which, if you want my honest answer, is probably the worst waste of time on a book that I’ve read since “Twilight”), helping out around the house, and working out. Unfortunately, with the sole exception of chilling in the hammock, none of these activities have actually been hitch-free.

My family, bless their dear hearts, still treats me as a guest. It makes sense, because I’ve spent all of three days here thus far, but this cannot go on. I’m going to be here for two years and I would like to establish a “member of the family” relationship now so that I don’t feel more idle than I already do. My attempts at cleaning up after myself are met with cries of protest. I am given a brand new bottle of bottled water with every meal even though my water filter is set up in the kitchen and everyone drinks from it. My mother will annihilate a coconut for me every day, and will insist I eat more than one if I happen to finish one within the hour it’s given to me. After lunch she waves me away to the family hammock because she knows I like to chill there despite my attempts at helping to clean up.

Not to worry, though. I am making progress. The other night my mother allowed me to hold the flashlight for her while she stir fried vegetables for dinner (we don’t get electricity until a few hours after it’s gone dark). I swept the floor when no one was looking. When my mother was slaughtering a duck for dinner (yes, that’s right. She plucked the feathers out of its neck and neatly cut a slit in the duck’s throat, bleeding it out into a bowl before leaving it there twitching and futilely grasping onto the last whispers of life. Dinner that night was delicious lime and parsley duck.) I snuck away and did the dishes. Today when she and my sister were doing laundry to beat the rain I jumped in and helped them rinse and hang all the clothing up; they could hardly complain about an extra pair of hands in the interest of time.

Working out is also somewhat of a work in progress. I discovered within the second day that the reason why no one wants to do anything during the afternoon, especially anything like working out, is because it’s balls hot. I learned this the hard way by going for a run at 2:30 in the afternoon and nearly keeling over from heat exhaustion amidst Cambodian stares of incredulity. Since then I’ve changed my routine up and now go running at 6 in the morning, followed by a few sets on the jump rope and a few ground exercises. The run this morning at 6 proved to me that there was actually an advantage to running at 2:30pm, though: because it’s so balls hot, no one is outside—least of all the dogs, who are all looking for shade to nap in. Compare that to the morning, where they are running around sniffing each other’s asses and barking the shit out of me as I run by. A few of the most ornery ones even chase after me barking, and this has led me to go running while wielding a dog-beating stick, and I wave it menacingly whenever one of those little fuckers get too close. There was one time where I actually had to stop, turn around, and take a wild swing at a particularly large and in-bred Cambodian Shepherd (kind of looked like a German Shepherd, hence the name) while its owner was hollering after it and telling me to “hit it, hit it!” After the dog was chased away from me by the owner I saw the owner beating its sorry ass with his own dog-beating stick. I told my mother this story, and she laughed and said, “You exercise in the afternoon, it’s hot. You exercise in the morning, you get bitten by dogs.” This led to the whole family laughing, mostly at me. Everyone kind of laughs at me here.

I decided to remedy the situation by going to meet the family with the gigantic dogs, maybe let the dogs get to know my scent so that when I run by tomorrow they won’t chase after me. I rode up to the house casually on my bike, strolled right up to the front, and there are the Cambodian Shepherds, tame as lambs. They don’t even lift their heads when I walk by. Where the fuck was this behavior this morning? Not to make the whole trip seem in vain, I introduced myself to the family and did the whole spiel about how I’m going to be here for two years as a Health Education Volunteer with the Peace Corps. They received me pretty well, which served as motivation to go down the street introducing myself to every family I ran into. At one point I told the kids in a family to say hello to me whenever they see me biking by with my ridiculous helmet and before they could say anything their mother stepped in and asked if I would give them money if they said hello to me.

What, crazy woman? No, I won’t give them money. I don’t even have any to myself; Peace Corps basically pays us in peanuts. That pretty much put me off wanting to go around introducing myself. Maybe tomorrow I’ll start on a different street. Or maybe I’ll go to the market and chill with all the ladies down there. Or maybe I’ll bike a few kilometers to the town over and explore. I don’t want to say this too preemptively but I might be getting the hang of living here. This, it’s aight.