Always Lookin’ Out

My host mother is, if there was EVER any doubt in the world, no-contest, hands down amazing. (Real Mom: you’re amazing too, don’t worry.) She really goes above and beyond anything the Peace Corps stipulates that a host mother must do–for example, if we’re having bony fish (i.e. fish with a lot of bones) for dinner, she’ll de-bone a fish and put it on a special plate for me, telling me to eat that instead of the un-boned fish because she knows I don’t really know how to pick the bones out of a fish like Khmer do. It’s not really necessary, as I’ve lived my whole life picking out the bones of fish (and occasionally swallowing them, only to be told by my real mother that it’s okay, they’ll melt and give me calcium). If we’re having chicken, or some chicken-like fowl, she’ll pick out the piece with the least amount of bones and put it in my bowl.

She always makes sure I’m never hungry, providing two meals a day (even though Peace Corps contract stipulates that she need only provide me with one) along with a variety of snacks and desserts. She brought up the Peace Corps contract one time and the one-meal-deal, scoffing scornfully while saying, “What am I supposed to do? Let you go hungry at lunchtime or dinnertime? Die.” (Fun little quirk of Khmer language: die, or “ngoap”, is added to the end of sentences that express contempt, disbelief, anger, exasperation, and the like.)

During the morning preceding laundry days, I like to set out the dirty clothes that I want to wash for that day so when I get back from work all I have to do is grab the pile and go downstairs to wash. More than once, she’s picked up my pile of dirty clothes and done it for me, as well as swept and mopped the house, fed the chickens, pigs, and cows, laid out the unhusked rice to dry, and cooked lunch.

Last week I was asked by one of my students to go to a wat kind of far from my house (6k) to teach an English class or two. I went, not actually knowing how far it was and how late it would be by the time I got back (6pm). I came home to my host mother standing at the front of the house scanning the roads for me, and find out that she had already sent out my dad on motorbike to look for me. When I told her where I went, she said it was much too far and that area is too dangerous, and that I shouldn’t go back there anymore. At the moment I thought she was just exaggerating, but last Thursday there was a murder in that area (a man was shot in the chest when he went outside to turn off his generator), so it was probably a good thing I wasn’t wandering those streets at sundown.

And today–today, she really set me straight on believing what everyone tells me. Here I was, bopping along, getting really excited whenever I could fully understand anyone and believing everything everyone says. The family across the street is conveniently the bus ticket vendor for my frequent  trips to Phnom Penh. Word on the street was that this family had a son who was visiting from America, so last week when I went over to buy my ticket I talked to them for a bit about this American son. Apparently, he lived in America since he was 7 and went to school there but didn’t like it so he came back to rural Cambodia to go to the high school I teach at. I took all of this in, serenely believing everything this woman said, until I retold the story to my family tonight.

My 13-year-old brother reacted first: he snorted with disbelief, saying, “Who would leave America to go to school at OUR high school?”

Then my mother: “Don’t believe that shit, Christine.”

Obviously. Who the hell would leave American education and come back to rural Cambodia to learn? Way to go, dimwit.

According to my mother, their son was going to school in Phnom Penh but got mixed up in the wrong sorts of crowds dealing marijuana so as punishment his parents made him come back to the countryside to study. She also said that they are very dishonest people and often say one thing but do another–that’s why, even if they are across-the-street neighbors, we aren’t friends with them.

It’s a really nice feeling to know that someone’s got my back and is looking out for me. Not that I don’t run everything I do by my host mother anyway (she usually knows a shortcut or the right person to contact for my project ideas) but an extra set of eyes and ears never hurt anyone.