Invisible and Unrestricted in Bangkok

I’ve been thinking a lot about identity lately. It all started when I visited Bangkok in April. One day while sitting on the outdoor staircase of a luxurious shopping mall, I became fully absorbed in watching people pass me by. I was energized by the vast number of people on the street and, in particular, their diversity. I felt instantly as though I could disappear into the masses, not to be noticed sitting among the Thai business men and women, the university students, the international bankers, the tourists, the “lady boys,” the street vendors. There was nothing noticeable about me, nothing remarkable. I hadn’t experienced that feeling since I left the States a year and half earlier. It was such a relief.

The busy streets of Bangkok

Living in a small Cambodian town, I am a spectacle, always on display. I tower over the Cambodian women, my short brown hair adding to my visibility. My skin is whiter than my Khmer friends’ and my nose more defined, and they are sure to tell me so every day. Physically, it’s impossible to blend in. Socially, too. Despite having solid language skills, there are still loads of miscommunications, awkward situations, and times when I’m the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on. These things make me stand out, and although I am generally embraced by the community, sometimes I just want to disappear into the background. Unfortunately, that’s not an option since I’m the only foreigner in town (excluding Tim, of course). The anonymity in Bangkok felt like an escape from my life in a metaphorical fishbowl.

Bangkok also made me realize how limited my life in rural Cambodia is. I’ve fallen head over heels for this country, but it remains true that my existence here is very narrow when compared to life in the US. Living in such a traditional setting means that in order to be effective in my work, or be accepted socially, I need to adhere to as many of the local customs as possible. For instance, in the past two years I have never left my house with my shoulders or knees showing. In fact, I wear a collared shirt out whenever my laundry pile will allow because that’s what women my age generally wear. I’m also restricted in who I can spend my time with, as it is not customary for men and women to spend leisure time together in public, let alone by themselves. I have been advised to avoid alcohol, some say even coffee, because good women do not drink these things. Furthermore, my social role is seen primarily – if not exclusively – as being a wife and a future mother, and much judgment comes from the fact that I do not do the daily cooking and that we do not yet have kids.

Showing off my shoulders in Bangkok

These limitations regarding the way I look, spend my time, and am viewed by the community are only part of the story. Operating in a foreign language each and every day is probably the biggest limitation. I rarely feel like I can express myself fully, due to both the intercultural element and the language barrier. It’s very difficult to maintain even the basic threads of identity, like humor or intellect, in a foreign language, which can result in feeling isolated.

Sitting in Bangkok though, observing what seemed to be a large middle class walking through the streets, I realized that some of the restrictions I feel also stem from the economic situation of Cambodia. In the US, I’d spend my weekends going to a baseball game, catching an art flick at the local movie theater, dining out at the newest restaurant, baking a favorite cake recipe. These, in small part, were things that defined me. It’s difficult to have leisure activities like these in a country where so many live below the poverty line. It’s difficult to act on my individual preferences and tastes when the market stalls all sell the same variations of factory-produced clothing gone awry or when the nearest concert venue is 250 kilometers away. If I am defined, at all, by what I do in my free time, rural Cambodia leaves me the same as everyone else, taking naps in a hammock and watching the same soaps on TV.

Naps: Cambodia’s favorite leisure time activity

The pressure from these restrictions, somewhat self imposed as they may be, built up slowly. Before going to Bangkok, I would not have even been able to articulate their existence. But in Bangkok, I felt more me than I had in a long time. It was a relief, a release. We spend our lives figuring out who we are, what we enjoy, where we fit into our world. To then be transplanted to a new world where we are unable to maintain the same sense of identity we worked so hard to create, is exhausting.

Coming back to my small Cambodian town after Bangkok was easy. I wasn’t so sure it would be. I effortlessly slipped back into the routine of shapeless dress shirts, half-understood conversations, and lunchtime naps. Truth is, realizations about my somewhat stifled identity were not enough to overshadow the things I’ve come to love about living here. They do color my experience though and, until now, had been missing from my stories. Living in Cambodia has been one of the most wonderful experiences of my life, but I did have to give up a part of myself to make room for Cambodia to come in.

Katie

The Cycle

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with one of my hospitality students that needs to be retold. It seemed to be a perfect example of how poverty shows itself, and influences the lives of generations. I hope I can explain it accurately, as this instance impacted my own thinking in some pretty profound ways. Most importantly, this is just one story of dozens we’ve heard during our time here that shows the lasting effects of poverty and just how difficult it is to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

Mun lives in a house with thatch walls and a thatch roof. The family has a small patch of rice paddy just behind the house that only provides enough rice for the family for a few months. There is no toilet and no water source besides a couple of rain basins. His sister works in a factory in Thailand to help support the family. His father sleeps in a pagoda and drives his moto in Phnom Penh, hoping to earn some cash giving rides around the city. Mun’s mom works as a farm laborer when there is work planting, transplanting and cutting rice, but the rest of the year she remains jobless.

As a result of his family’s precarious financial situation, Mun dropped out of school in 7^th grade and became a monk. This is a common life path for many poor Cambodian boys, when “free” public schooling becomes too expensive for families to afford. For Mun, becoming a monk and moving to the pagoda meant he could continue to study informally, and work on his English with older monks. This sparked an interest in English that continues today.

Two years ago, Mun was in an all too common moto accident in Phnom Penh and suffered a head injury. The doctor at the hospital offered to relieve the pressure on his brain for a few hundred dollars. Lacking the money, Mun’s family was forced to take him home without treatment, hoping his condition would improve on its own. After weeks in bed, Mun was slowly able to stand and then walk with support. He is not fully recovered even now, and often has trouble concentrating, standing for long periods, and walking evenly. Mun hasn’t seen a doctor since his initial hospital stay.

Mun and I meet at least twice a week to fine tune his English, work on life skills, vocational skills, and math skills to better prepare him for his dream job: being a receptionist in a hotel in Siem Reap where he can meet tourists from different cultures and continue to practice his English. During one of our many conversations, Mun talked of his injury once again, complaining that he was still weak and couldn’t yet work. He was hopeful however of a new medicine from Japan made from kelp that was being sold in Siem Reap. His aunt had purchased some for stomach problems and had been cured. Would it possible for me to help him pay $170 for three weeks of the medicine?

It was then that I felt the familiar pangs of cultural arrogance that had plagued me during previous conversations about traditional medicine in Cambodia. Although I had generally been patient throughout these discussions before, I found his request for money to buy something that almost certainly was a scam difficult to respond to calmly. Taking a deep breath, I slowly tried to break down the clear logical holes in his plan to finally improve his health. Why don’t doctors have this medicine? Why can’t you buy it in the health center in town? Why would a medicine that helped your aunt’s stomach cure your serious neurological injury? Even though there are commercials on the radio about the medicine, does that mean their claims are true? Why is the medicine so unbelievably expensive?

Mun answered question after question, but missed the greater picture. He insisted his aunt was better and that he would be better too if he only had this medicine. After a failed attempt to explain the placebo effect, the situation finally came into focus for me. Mun’s entire life determined how he approached the decision to buy this medicine or not. His lack of education and short time in an education system that doesn’t foster critical thinking left him vulnerable to scams. The lack of quality medical care in his country led to a distrust in modern medicine, which is inaccessible anyway since his family doesn’t have the money to pay doctors. The communal culture of Cambodia led him to trust his aunt’s experience more than his own lingering doubts about the product. Ultimately, the lack of money for education and health care was leading Mun to make poor decisions about his health out of desperation to get better. These poor decisions about his health would worsen his financial situation, which would worsen his health. The entire cycle of poverty was laid out in front of me. And, yes, it was soul-crushing.

In another world, Mun could have stayed in school to learn critical life skills, been able to afford a moto helmet to prevent head injuries, been able to receive adequate medical care after the accident, and had trust in local medical staff to treat him instead of snake oil salesmen. Instead, he’ll continue to consider “medicine” that costs a fifth of his family’s annual income while he still doesn’t get enough food to eat.

-Tim

COS Conference

This week, Tim and I are in Phnom Penh for our close of service conference. We’ll have two days of meetings that are meant to help us process our service, understand the nuts and bolts of transitioning to the States, and prepare us for closing out our projects at site. Despite the fact that it might sound fairly boring, the conference is a big deal for most volunteers, as it provides a sense of closure to the Peace Corps experience. This is the last official Peace Corps training before our service ends, and is therefore our last opportunity to see all the other volunteers from our cohort.

Good swing!

In order to celebrate the (near) completion of our service and spend some time with one another, the staff and volunteers have planned a few social activities on top of the formal meetings. Today was the first of those: a Sunday barbecue complete with swimming and a softball scrimmage. The weather was good and the food was better . However, the best part was seeing the Cambodian staff join in on the fun, learning to play America’s favorite pastime. All in all, a really wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

PC Staff watching the game

Tomorrow’s activity is a low-key trivia contest, but Tuesday’s river cruise is set to be a wild time. Most volunteers will head back to site on Wednesday, but Tim and I will stay here through the week so we can complete the medical and dental exams that are required before completing our service. It’s becoming more and more real with every day – our service is coming to an end quicker than we had ever imagined!

Katie

Camp GLOW 2013

Last weekend was the third annual Camp GLOW in Siem Reap. Sixty-three students from seven secondary schools came to learn about women’s health and empowerment at this four-day workshop. I can’t say enough wonderful things about GLOW – it really is one of my favorite Peace Corps activities.

This year’s t-shirt design

You might remember from last year that Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) is a project carried out by Peace Corps volunteers across the globe. It’s an opportunity to bring girls together from different communities to share their experiences and build their leadership capacity. Like last year, the camp was funded primarily through USAID’s Small Project Assistance fund, with help from each of the participating communities. However, this year the project grew in size – from 39 girls from three schools to 63 students from seven schools. I brought 11 girls from my site, all of whom had been actively involved in my weekly health club.

Posing with some of the girls

Our philosophy with Camp GLOW has always been to bring in competent, inspiring Khmer women to lead the sessions, and this year was no different. The first two days of the camp were led by the staff at Our Strength, who focused on sexual health and healthy relationships. The Women’s Resource Center joined us again this year as well, leading activities on self-awareness, goal setting, and community education. There was one new addition to the line-up this year though, as we asked students from the Royal University of Phnom Penh to lead a 4-hour session on career planning.

What does it take to be a good teacher?

In addition to the education sessions, there were plenty of fun activities to keep the girls engaged, including a newspaper fashion show, a pizza party, and a trip to Angkor Wat.

Making a traditional Cambodian outfit out of newspaper

Cute nas

Now that the camp is finished, each group of girls is planning to teach 100 community members about what they learned at GLOW. Having seen the way that my girls organized and led the domestic violence education event for nearly 500 people in March, I feel confident that they will do a great job passing on what they’ve learned. Even on the van ride home from the camp, the girls were fearlessly teaching the other passengers about menstruation and reproductive anatomy.

For more pictures of GLOW, click here.

Katie

Warm Fuzzy Feelings

Time has been racing by since we got back from vacation. It’s impossible to believe that we’ll be leaving our site in less than two short months. Exacerbating our warped perception of time is the fact that our schedules have been packed recently, with no real indication that things will slow down before we leave.

Last week was the first full work week since Khmer New Year. My week was a varied one, a reflection of what my life at site has become. It included weighing sessions, meetings with my girls’ club, preparations for Camp GLOW, planning sessions for the domestic violence project, English classes, and a refresher training for village health volunteers. Tim was back at school, teaching a full schedule for the first time in about six weeks. In addition to work activities, we spent a lot of time catching up with our host family and friends, who we hadn’t seen in some time. We had been feeling like vacation marked the beginning of the end, so it was encouraging to kick off the last stage of our service with such productive and fun activities.

Our host dad playing with his grandson this week

On Saturday, we went to Battambang to celebrate the marriage of our very first Khmer teacher. Sothearith introduced us to Cambodia’s language and culture during training in Takeo nearly two years ago. He has proven to be one of the most effective teachers and friendliest guys we’ve encountered in our time here. We were excited to be able to join in his wedding celebrations, especially because we had been hoping to get back to Battambang one more time before heading home. In addition to the wedding festivities, we were able to sneak in a show at the circus (the second time, for me) and a quick swim in a brand new rooftop pool. Clearly, when I describe my busy schedule, I’m using a loose definition.

These kids are AMAZING!

Overall, it was a really fun weekend, that had us regularly reminding ourselves how good our lives are here. There’s been an awful lot of warm fuzzy feelings about Cambodia lately, not to mention dozens of new thoughts I’d like to share as our time winds down. Let’s hope I can find the time and energy to do so, even as my schedule continues to gain momentum in the upcoming weeks.

Katie

 

 

Water Festival in Bangkok

The last stop of our trip was Bangkok, which mostly served as a way to break up the travel from southern Thailand back to Cambodia. However, the timing of our overnight in the capital made it one of the most memorable experiences of the entire trip. You see, earlier this week both Thailand and Cambodia celebrated the new year. In Thailand, they refer to the holiday as Water Festival (or Songkran), whereas in Cambodia it is simply called Khmer New Year. In both countries, the holiday officially lasts for three days, with celebrations spilling over for most of the month of April. It is the most anticipated time of the year, much like Christmas for many Americans.

In Cambodia, the new year is marked with relaxed afternoons spent with family in the countryside, drinking beer with buddies, and playing traditional games at the wat. The overall feeling during these three days is happy, but relaxed. In Thailand, however,  the vibe is anything but relaxed. Water Festival is an all-on party, where the tradition is to soak anybody and everybody with water and cover them in a floury paste.

Celebrating Water Festival in Silom (not my picture)

We had been told that Bangkok would be empty during this time because most people would return to their families’ homes in the countryside. Bangkok, we were told, is not known for its songrkan festivities. So we booked a room in the same guesthouse we had stayed in two weeks earlier and prepared ourselves for a quiet day of catching up on emails, reading, and wandering around the neighborhood where we were staying, Silom. Much to our surprise, we found out that Silom is one of the two main centers for Water Festival activities. When we left our guesthouse in search of a late lunch, we were greeted with huge crowds of people, many of them children or college age, armed with buckets of water, super soakers, hoses, coolers of ice, and flour paste. We walked a few blocks to the restaurant, and by the time we arrived we were soaked.

Fallen prey to the festival antics

The party went well into the night

After shivering in the air conditioned restaurant for a half an hour, eating our last Thai meal, we decided to brave the crowds and head back to the guesthouse. As soon as we stepped outside though, it was obvious that the party was just getting started. The crowds we had seen 30 minutes earlier had multiplied in size, making it nearly impossible to move anywhere. The streets were packed, the sidewalks were packed, the Skytrain entrance was packed. We could barely move, leaving us vulnerable once again to the ice cold buckets of water being playfully tossed by nearly everyone around us.

It took us hours to get back to the guesthouse, which was about an 8 minute walk on a normal day. There were moments of pure joy and amazement as we watched what seemed like hundreds of thousands of people all celebrating together, strangers laughing together as they covered each other’s faces in paste. There were also moments of frustration and panic, as we were caught in a massive mob, physically unable to move, cold and cramped. Overall, though,  it was a truly unforgettable experience, accidentally getting caught in the middle of it all, just thinking we were going out to grab a bite to eat. It was a great way to end our Thailand vacation. Now, we’re back in Cambodia ready to get back to life as usual.

Katie

Koh Lanta

After Chiang Mai, we hopped on a plane and headed to Phuket, Thailand’s best-known international resort town, for a quick overnight. Then, we boarded a boat for our final destination: Koh Lanta, a small island located three hours from the pier.

The boat we took to get to the island was filled with a strange combination of people. There were the usual suspects of course: bikini-clad tourists, foul smelling backpackers with dreads, twenty-somethings searching for themselves. However, there were others too, including young European parents with their small children, nearly a dozen Thai monks dressed in orange robes, local Muslim men and women trying to convince you to take a certain taxi or stay in a particular hotel. It was an unusual combination of travelers indeed, and a decent representation of what we would find on the island.

We got to Lanta in the late afternoon, the sky overcast and threatening to rain. The island was surrounding by beautiful, rocky cliffs jutting out of the ocean, but Lanta itself was covered in dense, green vegetation. On the way to our bungalow, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the female tuk tuk drivers wearing hijabs who were transporting shirtless surfer types to bars with signs advertising shroom shakes or inviting you to “smoke here.”

Our bungalow was nice enough, the main draw being that it was located directly on the beach. As we found out, the adjacent restaurant featured overpriced, bland versions of Thai dishes that were typical of the island. There were a couple of cafes nearby that served up delicious muesli and homemade yogurt, but this was clearly not the place to get authentic tom yam or green curry.

We spent three nights on the island, sunbathing and swimming whenever the weather would allow. In a given day it might have rained on two or three occasions, but there were always patches of sunshine that were perfect for relaxing. The beach had beautiful golden sand, with coral and rocks that were exposed during low tide.

The only day that we strayed far from our bungalow was the second, when we decided to explore the island on bike. We made our way up and down the hilly terrain, stopping to admire the different beaches and viewpoints along the way. We eventually found ourselves in “Old Town,” which had a strip of restaurants aimed at tourists, decorated with Chinese lanterns. As we rode back, we got drenched in a downpour, but by the time we arrived at our bungalow the sun was shining again, inviting us out for another swim.

We left Lanta happy to have made the trek to Thailand’s southern beaches. While in the south, we also stopped briefly in the town of Krabi, where we refueled on street food at an expansive marketplace before going on a great half-day kayaking tour through mangroves, karsts, and abandoned caves. Our vacation was almost over, but we were still looking forward to returning to Bangkok for Thailand’s biggest holiday: Water Festival.

Katie