I'm ok with it now, as the job of my dreams opened up in Cambodia and this degree I'm working on provides the necessary prerequisites. Still, it's a big giant signal - more expensive than it is loud.
Once I finish this last 15pg doozie of a paper, I'll provide more substantial updates and reflections on life.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
graduate education
all i have been thinking about is the value of graduate education. at an approximately $50000 price tag for Stanford's moniker in a leather folio diploma, i wonder everyday (and within that day about once every 3 hours), whether or not the cost is worth the incursion.
my first time through graduate school i did a teacher training program that led to an MA in Education. it was cumbersome and a bit full of itself, but i didn't realize its full value until i started teaching.
it made me a better teacher. not in terms of experience or management or confidence, but i knew how to think about teaching - what questions to ask of my practice, what lenses to look through to examine my daily routines.
now i'm back in grad school again, and wondering the same things. is it just a big fat signal to the world - 'look what i can do!' or will it teach me useful ways ot thinking and doing that i just have not recognized yet?
my first time through graduate school i did a teacher training program that led to an MA in Education. it was cumbersome and a bit full of itself, but i didn't realize its full value until i started teaching.
it made me a better teacher. not in terms of experience or management or confidence, but i knew how to think about teaching - what questions to ask of my practice, what lenses to look through to examine my daily routines.
now i'm back in grad school again, and wondering the same things. is it just a big fat signal to the world - 'look what i can do!' or will it teach me useful ways ot thinking and doing that i just have not recognized yet?
Friday, October 16, 2009
let's reason a bit:
my hair was falling out fairly consistently during my 3rd and 4th years of teaching, but especially this past year.
my hair stopped falling out while i was in cambodia this summer. it was rather thick, actually.
my hair has commenced it's dissatisfaction with my scalp again, falling at what feels like a more alarming rate than before.
other information we know:
1. i am considerably less stressed this year as a grad student than i was before, though i do spend much of my day thinking about the future (more than last year)
2. there is not nearly the level of emotional duress that i endured while teaching high school.
3. i am drinking a lot less now than before.
4. i am generally very happy, as opposed to much of last year.
...i don't know what's going on!!!
my hair was falling out fairly consistently during my 3rd and 4th years of teaching, but especially this past year.
my hair stopped falling out while i was in cambodia this summer. it was rather thick, actually.
my hair has commenced it's dissatisfaction with my scalp again, falling at what feels like a more alarming rate than before.
other information we know:
1. i am considerably less stressed this year as a grad student than i was before, though i do spend much of my day thinking about the future (more than last year)
2. there is not nearly the level of emotional duress that i endured while teaching high school.
3. i am drinking a lot less now than before.
4. i am generally very happy, as opposed to much of last year.
...i don't know what's going on!!!
Monday, September 14, 2009
Mu Sochua: Don't Compromise
I just returned from a lecture at Cal by Mu Sochua, a member of the Cambodian Parliament. She is currently facing trial for a defamation suit brought on by the Prime Minister Hun Sen. As the story goes, Hun Sen made a derogatory remark about Mu Sochua on national radio/tv so Mu Sochua and some opposition party leaders filed a suit against the minister for defamation. The Khmer courts (read "Hun Sen's courts) dismissed the lawsuit and in turn accepted a countersuit from Hun Sen, claiming that Mu Sochua defamed him.
She has been on a speaking tour around the US and testified on behalf of Human Rights before Congress just last week. In her speech today she made an elegant and impassioned case for all of us to continue the fight for justice.
She returns to Cambodia in a week, now known as a "traitor," likely into the arms of police officers and miitary officials who will escort her to prison. Still, she insists she must go home. There is no other recourse in this fight.
Don't Compromise.
She has been on a speaking tour around the US and testified on behalf of Human Rights before Congress just last week. In her speech today she made an elegant and impassioned case for all of us to continue the fight for justice.
She returns to Cambodia in a week, now known as a "traitor," likely into the arms of police officers and miitary officials who will escort her to prison. Still, she insists she must go home. There is no other recourse in this fight.
Don't Compromise.
Friday, September 11, 2009
PP 09 Journal Pt. II
July 11, 2009
10:07pm
While driving back from Kep today and seeing all walks of Cambodian life from the city to the sea, I was calmed by a deep sense that Cambodia was going to make it. Six years ago when I first stepped foot here all I took in was despair – people scraping by aimlessly, unsure of possibility. The second time around (my first Trek) I only sensed numbness and hopelessness – the dust and dirt of an unclean past. The third time was when I finally saw the rain clouds gathering – in the ready hands and perked ears of youth who believed they carried their country’s fate; they’d grown up and were ready to take the reigns. And during the fourth, fifth, and now sixth time it has been full on raining the most beautiful vibrancy of life. There is brightness and buoyancy instead of lackadaisical despair; hustle and bustle instead of We can’t. There is intense pride in nation religion king, and a thirst for a reinstated place in the world that seems nearly unquenchable.
Much of it is due to the fact that Cambodia has grown up. But I know that I have too, and the perspective gained with each passing year and each of my sojourns here only leaves me wanting the next time to come sooner.
July 12, 2009
The other.
I met an archaeologist today who is here doing research on ancient beads. When I mentioned that one of my relatives had purchased a pendant made of these ancient stones (which were likely looted from ancient graves), I got quite the look of disgust followed by a curt admonishment: “That is probably THE WORST THING anyone could do in Cambodia.”
Okay…
I agree that looting heritage pieces is a terrible thing and I even had a few admonishments of my own to share with my relative. However, the comment from the archaeologist affected me a lot and I have only today realized exactly what it was that bothered me so much.
I liken it to what some Khmers (or insert any other group) must feel like when foreigners come here and tell them what to do. They stand on morally high ground and dictate what is right and what is wrong – Don’t you know the value of this?! But I’ve been asking the same question for years: Who decides what is right and what is wrong?
What if, if I can play devil’s advocate for a minute, being dug up and sold is the destiny of the stones – to be the source of income for a poor farmer or street kid who happened upon an ancient tomb. Is there something so wrong about that? What if that was fate and not a violation of world heritage? The victor is not so clear sometimes in science vs. supernatural.
I guess what bothered me the most was the entitlement this researcher felt – that these stones be safeguarded for the sake of world heritage. I agree with her that they must be protected but something still bothers me about this legitimate looting of ancient treasures to be kept “safe” in museums and research laboratories, to become the subjects for dissertations and fortunes galore. Yes this research augments our understanding of our history and our humanity, but it does make you wonder what sacredness is violated in the process and for whom the heritage is preserved for…
July 13, 2009
“I have a son. Well, I had a son.”
I met C at RISC, an NGO that helps to reintegrate Cambodian-American deportees into Khmer society. For the last decade, Cambodian American non-citizens, including those who were granted refugee status in the early 1980s, have been deported back to Cambodia if they commit certain misdemeanors and felonies. Once they get here they face many obstacles to integration into life here and many fall back into the same cycles they were trapped in back in the US.
What struck me about what C said was the permanency of it – the undeniable certainty that he would live and die in Cambodia and that he would never set foot in the U.S. again. These returnees are asked to forget the United States, and along with it all of the bonds that tethered them to the only life they know.
***
I have run into some of the returnees at clubs and bars in Phnom Penh from time to time, still in their baggy shirts and sagging jeans. You would think they were tourists – grossly out of place but enjoying it, and you would think they would try to conform and fit in to Khmer life. Perhaps what America does to us is just done so deep that even distance and desolation cannot sever it.
July 15, 2009
Half of the time that I sit in Khmer class, I’m mad. 1. Now that I’ve been a teacher I can’t help but critiquing every decision the teacher makes, and 2. The content is infuriating. We talk about a lot of current events and our readings offer a survey of the different structures and institutions in Cambodia. With the level of corruption and mismanagement that exists in each area of governance, our conversations just generally leave me adding to the pile of rubbish that is all the things that are wrong with Cambodia. It’s hard to accept corruption as the modus operandi, but almost harder to be optimistic about change.
***
I long for the day when the opening paragraph of every article/book/pamphlet about Cambodia starts with something beautiful rather than something tragic, for the day when atrocity is no longer the hook. I wish Cambodia was known for its magic and wonder, and not solely its heartache.
July 19, 2009
4:15pm
I have been thinking a lot about Moses - he who was rejected by his people at first but turned out to be the leader for the Jewish Exodus. He was a Jew, but grew up as the prince of Egypt in the throngs of luxury, power and prestige. After murdering a fellow Egyptian (motivated by justice?) and then later threatened by Jewish witnesses (motivated by bitterness?), Moses decided to flee what he knew, to entrust himself to what he didn’t.
Moses’ story parallels the experience of second-generation children of immigrants and refugees like myself, who, having grown up swaddled in the privileges that growing up in the US bestows (for the most part), will likely have to come and wrestle with perplexities of identity and purpose. In my travels here in Cambodia I always feel like an outsider and wonder if, in the long run, it really is a good idea to try and live and work here. Won’t I just be rejected? Won’t I just be looked at as the American? Could my efforts ever be received as genuine, as from one within?
As the story goes, God calls Moses clearly and equips him adequately to make the journey to Egypt to lead his people out of bondage. Moses’ bi-culturality is not a curse but a gift, and what was once his demise becomes his treasure.
I am waiting for my burning bush.
***
When I talk to Khmer people here, the same thing always happens – initially it is friendly banter in Khmer, and everyone is so excited that I can speak Khmer so well – “Wow your teacher in Japan must be really good!” Once I reveal that my parents are from Cambodia and I grew up speaking Cambodian, the tenor of the conversation shifts instantaneously from friendly banter about my size and small eyes to ok-now-we’re-talkin’-for-real. They will inevitably tell me how hard it is to live in Cambodia, how little money they make, how corrupt things are, how I am so lucky, how I am so blessed, how they could find a wife for me if I wanted. I certainly enjoy the realness and trust that the kinship of language cultivates, but sometimes it seems to only lead me to feeling more guilty and to them feeling even more misfortunate. Sometimes silence seems like the better exchange.
Further thoughts from the end of July to mid-August
On Language
Language is the key to unlocking the heart, mind, and soul of a culture. The more you learn, the more you realize what you don’t know about a people or a place or a culture. It’s amazing that cultures come up with language to express so many different common human emotions. My main purpose here in Cambodia this summer has been to learn Khmer language at a more advanced level. I’m proud to say that my proficiency has increased by leaps and bounds. Now I’ll just need some people in the Bay to talk to in order to keep improving!
Lack of Inspiration
In general, it has been hard to write because aside from schoolwork, I don’t have many experiences with the Cambodia I know. I generally just go to class, do all of our program activities, and study at night. Note to self: be in/go to/look for/ create the experiences that inspire. (And I fear grad school may not be one of them…)
August Travels
Bad Neighbor
Vietnam has always been both a boon and a bother to Cambodia. With a history of entanglement that goes back thousands of years, and contemporary relations that are too close for comfort (to some), Cambodia and Vietnam are still figuring out how they can be good neighbors to each other.
Reconciliation may come when they realize that their stories are inextricably linked.
We visited the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, dedicated to bringing American war crimes during the Vietnam War to light. It is a sobering place, where truth comes distorted in a way we Americans are not used to. As I walked through the galleries and exhibit halls of Agent Orange victims, of village massacres and maps blackened with dots that indicated heavy shelling, I could not help but think that the fates of Cambodia and Vietnam intertwined. What happened in Vietnam was a harbinger for what was to happen in Cambodia, and how Vietnam is developing now hints at how Cambodia could look in the next decade.
Cambodians may think that Vietnam is the “bad neighbor” they’d rather not meddle with, but I hope that they can come to see that their histories and fates are enmeshed in each other’s in way that makes their prejudices and fears seem petty.
August 24, 2009
11:59am
Last Night In Phnom Penh
I walked everywhere today, thinking it would be the most romantic means for a long goodbye. I know I won’t be able to return to Cambodia next summer, so who knows when I’ll get to see her again. I am anxious for our next adventure already – a wanderlust to the core.
In a year’s time she’ll be all grown up – with lights and life that will mystify me yet again. She’ll smell different and look bolder, assured in her growth and promise. She will pulse with the pangs of youth; her heart beating to a new yet undefined rhythm. She will be a pearl again, and I will be sad to miss it.
***
One of my last memories will be of a boy, about 11 or 12 years old, rummaging through a heap of trash alone in front of the Central Market, looking for food to eat. I think back to one of my earliest reflections, to how my feet were so clean – to how my experience this summer rarely had me confront the face of poverty and powerlessness. I chose to keep walking. And now this boy remains but a shadow, shrouded by the emptiness of the city at night, and the sound of Styrofoam and plastic tossed aside.
***
***
Four waterways converge in Phnom Penh at Chaktomuk, and the confluence of muddy waters with muddier ones results in a natural phenomenon every year, when the rush of the Mekong River, surging with Tibetan ice melt, changes the direction of the Tonle Sap River’s flow. The Tonle Sap River, who had been for most of the year emptying out the great Tonle Sap Lake and meandering down towards the Mekong Delta, for a few months instead flows back into the lake, enlarging it to four times its normal size.
It is this confluence that for now captures my thoughts and reflections and yearnings. I’m a mix of experiences and wanderings, of dreams and hesitations, of grand plans and simple ones – and the confluence of them, though muddy and swirling and unclear as it may be, at least assures me that I am headed somewhere good and necessary.
10:07pm
While driving back from Kep today and seeing all walks of Cambodian life from the city to the sea, I was calmed by a deep sense that Cambodia was going to make it. Six years ago when I first stepped foot here all I took in was despair – people scraping by aimlessly, unsure of possibility. The second time around (my first Trek) I only sensed numbness and hopelessness – the dust and dirt of an unclean past. The third time was when I finally saw the rain clouds gathering – in the ready hands and perked ears of youth who believed they carried their country’s fate; they’d grown up and were ready to take the reigns. And during the fourth, fifth, and now sixth time it has been full on raining the most beautiful vibrancy of life. There is brightness and buoyancy instead of lackadaisical despair; hustle and bustle instead of We can’t. There is intense pride in nation religion king, and a thirst for a reinstated place in the world that seems nearly unquenchable.
Much of it is due to the fact that Cambodia has grown up. But I know that I have too, and the perspective gained with each passing year and each of my sojourns here only leaves me wanting the next time to come sooner.
July 12, 2009
The other.
I met an archaeologist today who is here doing research on ancient beads. When I mentioned that one of my relatives had purchased a pendant made of these ancient stones (which were likely looted from ancient graves), I got quite the look of disgust followed by a curt admonishment: “That is probably THE WORST THING anyone could do in Cambodia.”
Okay…
I agree that looting heritage pieces is a terrible thing and I even had a few admonishments of my own to share with my relative. However, the comment from the archaeologist affected me a lot and I have only today realized exactly what it was that bothered me so much.
I liken it to what some Khmers (or insert any other group) must feel like when foreigners come here and tell them what to do. They stand on morally high ground and dictate what is right and what is wrong – Don’t you know the value of this?! But I’ve been asking the same question for years: Who decides what is right and what is wrong?
What if, if I can play devil’s advocate for a minute, being dug up and sold is the destiny of the stones – to be the source of income for a poor farmer or street kid who happened upon an ancient tomb. Is there something so wrong about that? What if that was fate and not a violation of world heritage? The victor is not so clear sometimes in science vs. supernatural.
I guess what bothered me the most was the entitlement this researcher felt – that these stones be safeguarded for the sake of world heritage. I agree with her that they must be protected but something still bothers me about this legitimate looting of ancient treasures to be kept “safe” in museums and research laboratories, to become the subjects for dissertations and fortunes galore. Yes this research augments our understanding of our history and our humanity, but it does make you wonder what sacredness is violated in the process and for whom the heritage is preserved for…
July 13, 2009
“I have a son. Well, I had a son.”
I met C at RISC, an NGO that helps to reintegrate Cambodian-American deportees into Khmer society. For the last decade, Cambodian American non-citizens, including those who were granted refugee status in the early 1980s, have been deported back to Cambodia if they commit certain misdemeanors and felonies. Once they get here they face many obstacles to integration into life here and many fall back into the same cycles they were trapped in back in the US.
What struck me about what C said was the permanency of it – the undeniable certainty that he would live and die in Cambodia and that he would never set foot in the U.S. again. These returnees are asked to forget the United States, and along with it all of the bonds that tethered them to the only life they know.
***
I have run into some of the returnees at clubs and bars in Phnom Penh from time to time, still in their baggy shirts and sagging jeans. You would think they were tourists – grossly out of place but enjoying it, and you would think they would try to conform and fit in to Khmer life. Perhaps what America does to us is just done so deep that even distance and desolation cannot sever it.
July 15, 2009
Half of the time that I sit in Khmer class, I’m mad. 1. Now that I’ve been a teacher I can’t help but critiquing every decision the teacher makes, and 2. The content is infuriating. We talk about a lot of current events and our readings offer a survey of the different structures and institutions in Cambodia. With the level of corruption and mismanagement that exists in each area of governance, our conversations just generally leave me adding to the pile of rubbish that is all the things that are wrong with Cambodia. It’s hard to accept corruption as the modus operandi, but almost harder to be optimistic about change.
***
I long for the day when the opening paragraph of every article/book/pamphlet about Cambodia starts with something beautiful rather than something tragic, for the day when atrocity is no longer the hook. I wish Cambodia was known for its magic and wonder, and not solely its heartache.
July 19, 2009
4:15pm
I have been thinking a lot about Moses - he who was rejected by his people at first but turned out to be the leader for the Jewish Exodus. He was a Jew, but grew up as the prince of Egypt in the throngs of luxury, power and prestige. After murdering a fellow Egyptian (motivated by justice?) and then later threatened by Jewish witnesses (motivated by bitterness?), Moses decided to flee what he knew, to entrust himself to what he didn’t.
Moses’ story parallels the experience of second-generation children of immigrants and refugees like myself, who, having grown up swaddled in the privileges that growing up in the US bestows (for the most part), will likely have to come and wrestle with perplexities of identity and purpose. In my travels here in Cambodia I always feel like an outsider and wonder if, in the long run, it really is a good idea to try and live and work here. Won’t I just be rejected? Won’t I just be looked at as the American? Could my efforts ever be received as genuine, as from one within?
As the story goes, God calls Moses clearly and equips him adequately to make the journey to Egypt to lead his people out of bondage. Moses’ bi-culturality is not a curse but a gift, and what was once his demise becomes his treasure.
I am waiting for my burning bush.
***
When I talk to Khmer people here, the same thing always happens – initially it is friendly banter in Khmer, and everyone is so excited that I can speak Khmer so well – “Wow your teacher in Japan must be really good!” Once I reveal that my parents are from Cambodia and I grew up speaking Cambodian, the tenor of the conversation shifts instantaneously from friendly banter about my size and small eyes to ok-now-we’re-talkin’-for-real. They will inevitably tell me how hard it is to live in Cambodia, how little money they make, how corrupt things are, how I am so lucky, how I am so blessed, how they could find a wife for me if I wanted. I certainly enjoy the realness and trust that the kinship of language cultivates, but sometimes it seems to only lead me to feeling more guilty and to them feeling even more misfortunate. Sometimes silence seems like the better exchange.
Further thoughts from the end of July to mid-August
On Language
Language is the key to unlocking the heart, mind, and soul of a culture. The more you learn, the more you realize what you don’t know about a people or a place or a culture. It’s amazing that cultures come up with language to express so many different common human emotions. My main purpose here in Cambodia this summer has been to learn Khmer language at a more advanced level. I’m proud to say that my proficiency has increased by leaps and bounds. Now I’ll just need some people in the Bay to talk to in order to keep improving!
Lack of Inspiration
In general, it has been hard to write because aside from schoolwork, I don’t have many experiences with the Cambodia I know. I generally just go to class, do all of our program activities, and study at night. Note to self: be in/go to/look for/ create the experiences that inspire. (And I fear grad school may not be one of them…)
August Travels
Bad Neighbor
Vietnam has always been both a boon and a bother to Cambodia. With a history of entanglement that goes back thousands of years, and contemporary relations that are too close for comfort (to some), Cambodia and Vietnam are still figuring out how they can be good neighbors to each other.
Reconciliation may come when they realize that their stories are inextricably linked.
We visited the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, dedicated to bringing American war crimes during the Vietnam War to light. It is a sobering place, where truth comes distorted in a way we Americans are not used to. As I walked through the galleries and exhibit halls of Agent Orange victims, of village massacres and maps blackened with dots that indicated heavy shelling, I could not help but think that the fates of Cambodia and Vietnam intertwined. What happened in Vietnam was a harbinger for what was to happen in Cambodia, and how Vietnam is developing now hints at how Cambodia could look in the next decade.
Cambodians may think that Vietnam is the “bad neighbor” they’d rather not meddle with, but I hope that they can come to see that their histories and fates are enmeshed in each other’s in way that makes their prejudices and fears seem petty.
August 24, 2009
11:59am
Last Night In Phnom Penh
I walked everywhere today, thinking it would be the most romantic means for a long goodbye. I know I won’t be able to return to Cambodia next summer, so who knows when I’ll get to see her again. I am anxious for our next adventure already – a wanderlust to the core.
In a year’s time she’ll be all grown up – with lights and life that will mystify me yet again. She’ll smell different and look bolder, assured in her growth and promise. She will pulse with the pangs of youth; her heart beating to a new yet undefined rhythm. She will be a pearl again, and I will be sad to miss it.
***
One of my last memories will be of a boy, about 11 or 12 years old, rummaging through a heap of trash alone in front of the Central Market, looking for food to eat. I think back to one of my earliest reflections, to how my feet were so clean – to how my experience this summer rarely had me confront the face of poverty and powerlessness. I chose to keep walking. And now this boy remains but a shadow, shrouded by the emptiness of the city at night, and the sound of Styrofoam and plastic tossed aside.
***
***
Four waterways converge in Phnom Penh at Chaktomuk, and the confluence of muddy waters with muddier ones results in a natural phenomenon every year, when the rush of the Mekong River, surging with Tibetan ice melt, changes the direction of the Tonle Sap River’s flow. The Tonle Sap River, who had been for most of the year emptying out the great Tonle Sap Lake and meandering down towards the Mekong Delta, for a few months instead flows back into the lake, enlarging it to four times its normal size.
It is this confluence that for now captures my thoughts and reflections and yearnings. I’m a mix of experiences and wanderings, of dreams and hesitations, of grand plans and simple ones – and the confluence of them, though muddy and swirling and unclear as it may be, at least assures me that I am headed somewhere good and necessary.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
PP 09 Journal Pt. 1
The first half of my reflections from this summer in Cambodia:
June 18, 2009
7:02am
There’s one moment I savor more than any other when coming to Cambodia – or any new place for that matter, and that’s the first sniff when the airplane cabin doors are open and you step down onto the tarmac. It lasts but a few seconds – your nose flooded with the scent of a place you haven’t been able to relish in a while. Cambodia smells like sweat, and fish – its pungency strong like the aromatic fissure at the epicenter of the wet market. It certainly is not the most pleasing of fragrances I know, but there is no other smell that embraces you and welcomes you quite like this one.
2:34pm
I have been studying for 5 hours! It hurts my head but I am reading history and writing essays IN KHMER!!!
June 21, 2009
3:18pm
This expat lifestyle is glamorous and comfortable but I am thankful that it is temporary. For the last three years my sole interaction with Phnom Penh has been on the Global Urban Trek, where the goal is to facilitate a trajectory for US college students to come to love and learn from the third world urban poor. My job was to organize month-long home stays in urban poor communities and lead them in working alongside community organizations that take a holistic approach to development – all under the umbrella of understanding God’s love for justice and the poor. It was intense, and real, and right.
This is not the Trek. We live in a nicely furnished flat in Boeng Kang Kong (expat central). How I know it’s a world of difference from most of the people in Phnom Penh is not the fact there is a 24-hour guard at the gate, or even that there is wifi in our apartment, but that there is drywall in our apartment! Drywall! In Cambodia! Where you sweat taking a shower! I’ve only lived in wooden (and sometimes tiled) homes in Cambodia. This drywall is livin’ large indeed.
More so than the living situation, it’s the type of people I’m identifying with. We get shuttled to the Royal University in a nice Benz van, and shuttled wherever we want to go. We go out at night dancing on floating pontoons, drinking watered down cocktails that costs a day-laborers average wage. I’m not living with a poor family and eating what they eat or following their pace of life; I’ve just adapted my American pace for hotter weather. Because of where we live and what we do, the type of people I interact with are completely different from what I am used to. The poor are not my neighbors – they are the ones rapping on our car windows, the ones asking for 1000riel between the bars we hop to and from. They are statistics we read about and discuss in Khmer class, and no longer the faces we see everyday. They are the peddlers and street vendors I don’t have to frequent because I’m not on a tight budget. This distance is the starkest contrast in Trek vs. Expat and it is disturbing to think that had I not Trekked for the last three years, I would have come to think that Phnom Penh was all nightclubs with exotic names and orphanages with desperate ones.
Thank you, Global Urban Trek, for teaching me where our hearts should be.
June 25, 5:31pm
Dirt.
My feet are not dirty enough. In fact, they are quite clean in a disturbing way.
Our Mercedes Benz van picks us up each morning at 7:30am, after everyone has gotten their ice coffee and breakfast food down on the corner (pavement). Once we get to the Royal University of Phnom Penh we walk down a sterile pathway shouldered by koi ponds (concrete). Sometimes I drink expensive coffee and study at Café Sentiment (brick). And though my feet get a little dirty walking around our apartment (tile), the dust is mostly our own doing.
I’m ok with this lack of dirt (more than ok with it, actually) but I am very aware of what dirt on one’s feet means and what story each coat of it tells.
* * *
July 2, 2009
Part of our language program entails learning about various organizations in Phnom Penh. We visited the Transcultural Psychological Organization (TPO) and listened to a presentation on their work with mental health in conjunction with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
I was certainly glad that such an effort existed and I can only see goodness from it, but it got me thinking about the broader scope of the Tribunal – about the need for healing of not just individual lives, but of an entire national and cultural identity.
I think back to our Cambodian enclaves in Long Beach, Lowell, and Tacoma; to the other families resettled in other US cities and towns that had to learn how to shovel snow or ride the bus – what does the Tribunal mean to people like my parents, my grandmother? Those who are 30 years removed from an experience they would rather be 31 years removed from?
I actually have not talked to my parents about it yet, but I hope that for them and for other Cambodians abroad, that it is not just a 2-minute segment of video clips and anchorman commentary broadcasted at 7am on Saturday mornings (always pre- and post- their good morning karaoke). My hope is that it brings healing and gives perspective on lives turned forever upside-down.
The Khmer psychologists at TPO firmly believed that the Tribunal is what the country and its people need in order to move forward – to know the truth of what happened those 4 years, to make sense of the egregious atrocities to human life, to shed light on the nightmares and give voice to the silences, and to unearth the two million buried memories and properly lay them to rest.
July 4, 2009
As the clock struck midnight last night at the Riverhouse Lounge along Phnom Penh’s Sisowath Quay, the DJ suddenly stopped the music and played “Happy Birthday”… to America. I had a moment of intense pride and patriotism – induced mostly by Obama and a little by watered-down tequila (from a Khmer man in a sombrero nonetheless) – and I started to sing along. But a moment of clarity of surrounding and place shut me up – we were, after all, in an upscale bar teeming with expats serving $4 cocktails. Freedom and liberty are worthy of celebration but hard to revel in while on a balcony overlooking the muddy Mekong and the beggars and street children she keeps watch over at night.
July 6, 2009
10:17pm
I met Boomer last night, one of the 150 or so Cambodian-American deportees who have been living in Cambodia since they were detained and deported from the United States. Since 2002, U.S. Immigration (Homeland Security) has been ejecting it’s Cambodian-American criminals - those one-time refugees who were handed green cards on gold(ish) platters. Growing up, they got involved in risky activities and did their time. From petty theft to murder to, in one case I heard about, disciplining her child (in legal terms, child abuse), the US’s memorandum of understanding with Cambodia pretty much says it’s one strike and you’re out, even if you came to the US in the 80’s as a refugee. Once they get here it is hard to find work, and the mental and emotional stress of exile is overwhelming. The most recent batch arrived in Phnom Penh few months ago.
Despite the adversity, Boomer has perspective on it all that keeps him surviving. And the calming truth he has come to is exactly what I have been mulling over lately. That perhaps in the bigger picture of things, Cambodian Americans are meant to come back here and help rebuild. We were just sojourning in the U.S. – Nehemiahs in waiting - and really, we were just supposed to get educated and develop skills and come back home.
I’ve struggled each time I’ve come with looking differently and talking differently; with being of a different class and worldview; with being able to come and go as I please; with being one of the lucky ones. Still, my heart is here and Boomer helped me see that maybe I’m not as different as history has intended.
Of course the U.S. is still my home but the more I learn about Cambodia, the more I feel that the U.S. is devoid of a history and culture I personally feel connected to. You come here and see an ancient temple, or etymologize a word in Sanskrit, or hear a Buddhist chant and instantly you feel connected to centuries of history and cycles of life. The American story begins just a few hundred years ago, and honestly, leaves me still wondering just exactly who I am.
Then again, perhaps my story is exactly what the American story is – one in which the absence of a past leads us to look forever forward.
July 8, 2009
7:07am
Juxtaposed.
Last night we went to the one-year anniversary of UNESCO awarding World-Heritage site status to Cambodia. It’s a source of tremendous pride for Khmers because there has been much conflict with Thailand over the land, with violence escalating after an international body recognized it legally last year as Cambodia’s.
The celebration was in the Olympic Stadium and a sea of white-shirted attendees filled the venue. After the white-shirts started to leave (they had paid $3 for admission with a t-shirt), the masses of others who had been waiting at the gates were allowed to come in. They were the young and the old (mostly young) who just wanted to celebrate and see the live musical performances.
It was raucous, young, and full of patriotism. The venue was jam-packed to the gills (so much so that I didn’t even feel the pickpocket who snatched my camera) and the heat suffocating but full of life. As they cheered and danced and stood to wave their flags, I could clearly hear and see and smell that this was where the heart and soul of Cambodia was – in its youth and their pride for their country.
Immediately after this we went to Elsewhere, our we-need-a-break-from–the-heat-so-let’s-pay-$5-for-drinks-and-jump-in-the-pool place. It is somewhere quiet, tranquil, with plenty of space (also full of expats). With its rim of tropical foliage and pleasant water cascading down rock walls, Elsewhere is exactly where you want it to be – elsewhere.
So far my trip has been about these juxtapositions. If they keep coming, I just might forget which side I’m on.
June 18, 2009
7:02am
There’s one moment I savor more than any other when coming to Cambodia – or any new place for that matter, and that’s the first sniff when the airplane cabin doors are open and you step down onto the tarmac. It lasts but a few seconds – your nose flooded with the scent of a place you haven’t been able to relish in a while. Cambodia smells like sweat, and fish – its pungency strong like the aromatic fissure at the epicenter of the wet market. It certainly is not the most pleasing of fragrances I know, but there is no other smell that embraces you and welcomes you quite like this one.
2:34pm
I have been studying for 5 hours! It hurts my head but I am reading history and writing essays IN KHMER!!!
June 21, 2009
3:18pm
This expat lifestyle is glamorous and comfortable but I am thankful that it is temporary. For the last three years my sole interaction with Phnom Penh has been on the Global Urban Trek, where the goal is to facilitate a trajectory for US college students to come to love and learn from the third world urban poor. My job was to organize month-long home stays in urban poor communities and lead them in working alongside community organizations that take a holistic approach to development – all under the umbrella of understanding God’s love for justice and the poor. It was intense, and real, and right.
This is not the Trek. We live in a nicely furnished flat in Boeng Kang Kong (expat central). How I know it’s a world of difference from most of the people in Phnom Penh is not the fact there is a 24-hour guard at the gate, or even that there is wifi in our apartment, but that there is drywall in our apartment! Drywall! In Cambodia! Where you sweat taking a shower! I’ve only lived in wooden (and sometimes tiled) homes in Cambodia. This drywall is livin’ large indeed.
More so than the living situation, it’s the type of people I’m identifying with. We get shuttled to the Royal University in a nice Benz van, and shuttled wherever we want to go. We go out at night dancing on floating pontoons, drinking watered down cocktails that costs a day-laborers average wage. I’m not living with a poor family and eating what they eat or following their pace of life; I’ve just adapted my American pace for hotter weather. Because of where we live and what we do, the type of people I interact with are completely different from what I am used to. The poor are not my neighbors – they are the ones rapping on our car windows, the ones asking for 1000riel between the bars we hop to and from. They are statistics we read about and discuss in Khmer class, and no longer the faces we see everyday. They are the peddlers and street vendors I don’t have to frequent because I’m not on a tight budget. This distance is the starkest contrast in Trek vs. Expat and it is disturbing to think that had I not Trekked for the last three years, I would have come to think that Phnom Penh was all nightclubs with exotic names and orphanages with desperate ones.
Thank you, Global Urban Trek, for teaching me where our hearts should be.
June 25, 5:31pm
Dirt.
My feet are not dirty enough. In fact, they are quite clean in a disturbing way.
Our Mercedes Benz van picks us up each morning at 7:30am, after everyone has gotten their ice coffee and breakfast food down on the corner (pavement). Once we get to the Royal University of Phnom Penh we walk down a sterile pathway shouldered by koi ponds (concrete). Sometimes I drink expensive coffee and study at Café Sentiment (brick). And though my feet get a little dirty walking around our apartment (tile), the dust is mostly our own doing.
I’m ok with this lack of dirt (more than ok with it, actually) but I am very aware of what dirt on one’s feet means and what story each coat of it tells.
* * *
July 2, 2009
Part of our language program entails learning about various organizations in Phnom Penh. We visited the Transcultural Psychological Organization (TPO) and listened to a presentation on their work with mental health in conjunction with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
I was certainly glad that such an effort existed and I can only see goodness from it, but it got me thinking about the broader scope of the Tribunal – about the need for healing of not just individual lives, but of an entire national and cultural identity.
I think back to our Cambodian enclaves in Long Beach, Lowell, and Tacoma; to the other families resettled in other US cities and towns that had to learn how to shovel snow or ride the bus – what does the Tribunal mean to people like my parents, my grandmother? Those who are 30 years removed from an experience they would rather be 31 years removed from?
I actually have not talked to my parents about it yet, but I hope that for them and for other Cambodians abroad, that it is not just a 2-minute segment of video clips and anchorman commentary broadcasted at 7am on Saturday mornings (always pre- and post- their good morning karaoke). My hope is that it brings healing and gives perspective on lives turned forever upside-down.
The Khmer psychologists at TPO firmly believed that the Tribunal is what the country and its people need in order to move forward – to know the truth of what happened those 4 years, to make sense of the egregious atrocities to human life, to shed light on the nightmares and give voice to the silences, and to unearth the two million buried memories and properly lay them to rest.
July 4, 2009
As the clock struck midnight last night at the Riverhouse Lounge along Phnom Penh’s Sisowath Quay, the DJ suddenly stopped the music and played “Happy Birthday”… to America. I had a moment of intense pride and patriotism – induced mostly by Obama and a little by watered-down tequila (from a Khmer man in a sombrero nonetheless) – and I started to sing along. But a moment of clarity of surrounding and place shut me up – we were, after all, in an upscale bar teeming with expats serving $4 cocktails. Freedom and liberty are worthy of celebration but hard to revel in while on a balcony overlooking the muddy Mekong and the beggars and street children she keeps watch over at night.
July 6, 2009
10:17pm
I met Boomer last night, one of the 150 or so Cambodian-American deportees who have been living in Cambodia since they were detained and deported from the United States. Since 2002, U.S. Immigration (Homeland Security) has been ejecting it’s Cambodian-American criminals - those one-time refugees who were handed green cards on gold(ish) platters. Growing up, they got involved in risky activities and did their time. From petty theft to murder to, in one case I heard about, disciplining her child (in legal terms, child abuse), the US’s memorandum of understanding with Cambodia pretty much says it’s one strike and you’re out, even if you came to the US in the 80’s as a refugee. Once they get here it is hard to find work, and the mental and emotional stress of exile is overwhelming. The most recent batch arrived in Phnom Penh few months ago.
Despite the adversity, Boomer has perspective on it all that keeps him surviving. And the calming truth he has come to is exactly what I have been mulling over lately. That perhaps in the bigger picture of things, Cambodian Americans are meant to come back here and help rebuild. We were just sojourning in the U.S. – Nehemiahs in waiting - and really, we were just supposed to get educated and develop skills and come back home.
I’ve struggled each time I’ve come with looking differently and talking differently; with being of a different class and worldview; with being able to come and go as I please; with being one of the lucky ones. Still, my heart is here and Boomer helped me see that maybe I’m not as different as history has intended.
Of course the U.S. is still my home but the more I learn about Cambodia, the more I feel that the U.S. is devoid of a history and culture I personally feel connected to. You come here and see an ancient temple, or etymologize a word in Sanskrit, or hear a Buddhist chant and instantly you feel connected to centuries of history and cycles of life. The American story begins just a few hundred years ago, and honestly, leaves me still wondering just exactly who I am.
Then again, perhaps my story is exactly what the American story is – one in which the absence of a past leads us to look forever forward.
July 8, 2009
7:07am
Juxtaposed.
Last night we went to the one-year anniversary of UNESCO awarding World-Heritage site status to Cambodia. It’s a source of tremendous pride for Khmers because there has been much conflict with Thailand over the land, with violence escalating after an international body recognized it legally last year as Cambodia’s.
The celebration was in the Olympic Stadium and a sea of white-shirted attendees filled the venue. After the white-shirts started to leave (they had paid $3 for admission with a t-shirt), the masses of others who had been waiting at the gates were allowed to come in. They were the young and the old (mostly young) who just wanted to celebrate and see the live musical performances.
It was raucous, young, and full of patriotism. The venue was jam-packed to the gills (so much so that I didn’t even feel the pickpocket who snatched my camera) and the heat suffocating but full of life. As they cheered and danced and stood to wave their flags, I could clearly hear and see and smell that this was where the heart and soul of Cambodia was – in its youth and their pride for their country.
Immediately after this we went to Elsewhere, our we-need-a-break-from–the-heat-so-let’s-pay-$5-for-drinks-and-jump-in-the-pool place. It is somewhere quiet, tranquil, with plenty of space (also full of expats). With its rim of tropical foliage and pleasant water cascading down rock walls, Elsewhere is exactly where you want it to be – elsewhere.
So far my trip has been about these juxtapositions. If they keep coming, I just might forget which side I’m on.
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