Goodbyes are not Forever and they are not the End.

For my last weekend I went with my host family and the Hope for Happiness School to the Rabbit Island over the weekend. I love the island, it is so lovely, tiny and preserved. When I came here in my first month, I always though that I wanted to come back. We went in a bus full of 40 students and arrived at the island at around 12 o’clock. I shared a room with five other girls and soon we were all in the sea, playing Frisbee, diving and playing hide and seek. I had to teach some girls how to swim and beside the fact that we were swimming in clothes, I felt light and bubbly. In the afternoon I went on an excursion with Eric and a few other students around the island. We didn’t know what to expect and how long the way would be, but it was beautiful. When I went there with Katharina and Theresa, the whole island had been untouched by humans and there were plamtress everywhere. I was shocked when I heard, that they wanted to build a hotel there and had cut down all the trees at one side of the island. It was so sad to see and I remembered what beautiful pictures we had took there before. The other side of the island had stayed the same though what relieved me a little bit. I don’t understand why humans have to destroy every single beautiful things that is left of rare and special nature. It breaks my heart. Eric thought the same, he seemed to be deeply moved when I told him how the one place had looked only some months ago. I hope boys like him will be the new government of Cambodia in the future. There really needs to be some change. In the evening we were all dancing around the fire, singing songs and Eric had brought his guitar. Siphen gave us a lesson of Apsara dancing and the few other toursits on the island stared at us as, if they had never seen a crazy crowd of people doing traditional Cambodian things on an island in the middle of the night. The next day we all went to collect the rubbish that is lying everywhere on the island and Siphen talked about the importance of preserving our nature. I feel like she alone can change so much with having the right thoughts and giving them on to the students.

My last week in Angtasom was a rollercoaster of feelings, I was sad and confused, excited and desperate all at the same time. I had to say goodbye to different people every day and I didn’t feel like I was ready to do so at all. Sokeurn gave me a little yellow butterfly to say goodbye and as he always seems to be quite a serious guy who doesn’t show any emotions, I felt very touched by the gesture. Then I said goodbye to Manich, Sokna, Pheary, Chanthou and of course Sopheak. For Sopheak it was so hard for me, she really became my best friend in Cambodia and when she left and I went back to Angtasom, I was crying the whole way in the tuc tuc and the driver was turning around evry two seconds, completely incapable of dealing with the situation. Saying goodbye to Kadet, Sreydieb, Ratana and everyone else who worked with me in Angtasom was equally hard. I got little presents from everyone and got invited to someone else for lunch all week long. Saying goodbye to the children was the hardest of course. The class with my youngest children had all prepared little letters for me, writing: “I love you Malin.” or “I will miss you Malin.” and when some of the girls started to cry, I couldn’t do anything, but start to cry to and everyone came to the front and hugged me and Daro my co-teacher told them we would play a game and everyone could ask questions for my last day. The class I am always teaching from five to six all collected money and then we went to a restaurant to eat and drink something together and everyone was excited and talking over the heads of the others. I gave them a speech of how I wanted them to keep reading and follow their dreams and I had the feeling like I knew all of them so well up to that point, that I was leaving part of me behind with them. The next day I said goodbye to everyone at home and Siphen gave me a purple scarf as if I would actually need it in Phnom Penh. It was even difficult to say goodbye to my tuc tuc driver Vanna who I said hello to every morning. It is strange, it was surely not always easy to live in Angtasom, many things were different and difficult, but I learned so much, experienced so much, grew so much and felt happier than ever before. I will miss the rice fields, the loud market with the little stands that sell the most delicious home-made things, the chicken that are running around, the bumpy roads, the smell of lighting sticks, the incredible heat that makes you dizzy and the sunsets that are more beautiful there than I ever saw them before. Most of all I will miss the people that are so good-hearted that you can’t do anything, but like them back. There positiveness that is touching and their simpleness that makes you reconsider everything you knew before. From now on, I will keep everything I learned in the last six months in mind, keep it in mind in my steps, my actions, the things I say and the dreams I will set up for myself in the future.

Heal The World

The Learning Center was closed over Chinese New Year and I naturally took it as an opportunity to travel. On the way to Phnom Penh I sat next to a monk that had three different phones in his bag. One oft hem was an Iphone. I sometimes wonder what is happening to the traditional images of Eastern spirituality. Monks that are on facebook and order food from a street kitchen. I always think I am far more reluctant towards them than them towards me. I happens to me that a monk is smiling at me while I am trying to walk a respectful bow around him, trying to avoid eye contact by any means.

It is easier now to find my way around in Phnom Penh. When I waited for my bus that should bring me to the north-western town Battambang, I talked a little bit to some Tuc Tuc drivers that waited for work. When they heard I could speak Khmer they immediately changed their entire manner and asked me a whole bunch of questions. One of the men had an English grammar book with him and wanted me to practise with him. It was quite funny to have grown up students, instead of little children that listen to my explanations. When we came to the grammar topic of places, one of them helpfully changed his position and everyone was shouting “behind”, “next to”, “opposite of” as he hopped around a chair. Everyone who walked passed us gave us strange looks. They were all super excited and had so much fun, I honestly considered to offer free English courses for tuc tuc drivers. When the bus finally came I sat down next to a boy of about 14 years who wouldn’t stop ask me if I wanted to share my food with him. I wasn’t really hungry, but eventually I put the Leibniz cookies from my grandma out of my bag and lay them in front of us on the table. He happily took five cookies and gave me some strange looking fruits and some chilli sauce. After we had been driving for about an hour, the bus driver turned on a movie. It was about a small village where a dog suddenly went crazy and tried to eat all the inhabitants. It was so loud and the quality just as the story line so poor, I felt like I might as well be easier to jump out of the bus and walk to Battambang. To my infortune, the man behind me suddenly began to ask me what I was doing in Cambodia and when I said I worked as a teacher he asked me if I wanted to come and visit his university somewhere in the middle of nowhere to help. I told him, if I should ever find time I would try to come, but he insisted to get my e-mail. I don’t understand why foreigners, no matter how unprofessional they might look (an 18 year old girl with an old backpack and a strange mix of clothes), are always being invited to come to teach only because they have white skin. No matter that English teachers in Phnom Penh have a bad reputation, as really everyone can come and start to work there. When I had written down my e-mail address for the man, I tried to sleep, but of curse I was interrupted again. The man on the other side of the aisle pointed on himself and said he was part of the Muslim minority in Cambodia. Then he told me his whole life story and showed me pictures of his family. He wanted to know if there were many Muslims in Germany and if I had ever thought about changing my religion. I told him that I wasn’t religious at all, what just made him sigh in a “the youth of today”-way. The drive should take seven hours but to that point, we were already on the road for eight. Well, that is not exactly true, we spent a lot of time stopping, so we had time going to the toilet or buying something to eat. When we stopped this time though, we were really in the middle of nowhere. I looked out of the window to see if I could spot something, but I couldn’t. Around us were just fields. In that moment my phone began to ring. I looked at the display and saw that it were my grandparents. Perfect timing of course. I answered the phone and could barely understand anything because it was so loud. The guy next to me looked curious as if he wanted to take over the phone and the Muslim man looked as if he wanted to say that we really had other problems and I should be reasonable and turn of the phone. I stood up and went to the driver seat to get away from the noise, but it just got worse. I turned around them and faced the whole bus load full of people. “Som siem sniet!”, I said like I do it with my younger students (please be quiet) and immediately it was silent. What classroom words can do is really magic. I then asked the driver to open the door to explain my grandparents that we apparently just got a engine breakdown in the middle of nowhere and it was about to be pitch dark in about five minutes. I said it in a nice and reassuring way though, of course. Soon everyone else realized, that we wouldn’t move away from here for some time and got out of the bus. It took two hours until another bus arrived to pick us up.

The next morning I rented a bicycle to drive to the Bamboo Train outside of Battambang. No matter where I go in Cambodia, it looks the same. High palm trees and people that sell their fruits in front of little wooden houses, that are covered in advertisement for beer and blue plastic chairs. There is also an orange box with beverages and some candy that is hanging off the ceiling, waiting to be sold in front of nearly every house. There are motorbikes and lost cows on the way and crowds of children that say hello to you. And then there are men lying in hammocks and women feeding chicken. I asked some people for the way, but just seemed to move farther away from the place I actually wanted to go. Suddenly I saw something small and black coming towards me. I closed my eyes and felt a burning pain. Directly under my eye, a bee had stung me. I am allergic against bees and know so, since I once stepped on a bee when I was six years old and my foot got swollen three times the size. I wasn’t going to just stop looking for the bamboo train though and was in the middle of nowhere so it wouldn’t make much sense to just stop. The train rail seemed to be centuries old and the actual “train” was just a wooden table with little wheels under it. Two men moved the thing on the rail and off we went, much faster than I ever imagined it could be possible. The Cambodians had used the train to transport goods from one place to the other when the streets were destroyed and there was no infrastructure after the time of the Khmer Rouge. The whole landscape looked horrible, after the harvesting season there was no green anymore to be seen and instead everything was dark black And old Khmer saying goes like this: “If you want to learn, kill the master; if you want the fruits, burn the foot of the tree. This seemingly paradoxical assertion actually means that the student should outperform his master. One used to put ashes at the foot of the coconut tree in order to fertilize the soil. Furthermore, some make a fire at the foot of the tree because of the fact that under stress plants tend to increase their fruit production. That is why Cambodian farmers set fire to their rice fields, to improve the next harvest. I was nevertheless shocked to see the never-ending area of burned soil. I wish it would be possible to drive with a train through the whole country, but it might take years until this is possible again. In the mean time my eye got swollen worse and worse.

In the afternoon I met Stacy who was in Battambang for work and she was shocked when she saw my eye. She couldn’t believe that it was only a sting, as I could barely open the eye. We sat down in a little restaurant to eat something and were talking as suddenly a boy emerged and introduced himself to us. He said he was from Norway and in Cambodia for two weeks. We were a little bit confused that he came to talk to us out of the blue and then I realized that two of his friends were behind him. When I was mustering them, it occurred to me, that they were all looking at my eye. Then the first guy asked me, if he could pray for me. I looked very confused and Stacy seemed to be so shocked, she didn’t reply either. The guy might have thought we didn’t really understand him. He asked me again, if he could pray for my eye. I slowly shook my head and explained to him, that it was a bee sting and that I would try to get a cream for it or anti-allergics. I thought of the story in the bible when Jesus healed the blind man and the way that the other guys crowded behind him, made me think of the disciples. Scary. He looked deeply disappointed when I rejected his request, came to me and took my hands in his. Needless to say, that the whole restaurant was staring at us and Stacy still didn’t react. He looked at me as if he wanted to hypnotize me and said: “I am a Christian. I can heal people.” At this point I started to laugh. I was sure that somewhere had to be a hidden camera. But when I saw the disappointed look on his face, I kind of felt bad and told him I was sorry, but I was going to be fine without his prayers, too. Then they left one after the other, following the modern day Jesus from Norway who had come to Cambodia to heal people.

The next day my eye looked so horrible, I nearly regretted not having let Jesus pray for my eye. The whole staff in my hostel urged me to go to the hospital, so I said yes. It took ages until the doctor had time for me and I had to give what felt like a litre of blood. Then a doctor who could barely speak English asked me a whole bunch of questions about my eye and then he wrote down about twenty different kinds of remedies for me. I told the women in the pharmacy I only needed the anti-allergica and gave everything else back. Weird looks followed me wherever I went. I was not only taller, whiter and blonder than everyone else now, I also looked like the female version of Quasimodo.

In the afternoon I decided to go with a group of people from my hostel to a bat cave. It was on top of a mountain, about half an hour away from town by Tuc Tuc. On the mountain was also an incredibly beautiful pagoda, with towers carved with flowers, shining in gold. When we arrived on top of the mountain I saw a tree that grew just next to the stupas. It was the same tree that my host family has in their garden. The so called Moringa leaves are growing on the branches and it is one of the super foods that contain all kind of vitamins and minerals. Buying it in a shop is very expensive and eating the wild grown leaves is even better. I told everyone about it and a minute later all four people that came with me there started to eat the leaves of the tree as if they were starving. A girl from Australia asked me if a little package was really 20 Dollars and when I said yes, she put another hand full in her mouth. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. What was very sad on the other hand was, that the place had been used by Khmer Rouge as “Killing Caves”. There are thousands of holes, tunnels and carvings in the mountain where bats live and where in former times prisoners had been tortured and thrown down the in the darkness to rot. There are still bones and skulls everywhere, it is truly terrifying to see. When it was about to get dark, we sat down on a rock and waited for the bats to come out. We had seen some little ones before, flying over our heads and hanging from the ceiling above us. They were really cute, but suddenly, there was a giant black cloud that came out of the mountain, so that you could barely see how many there were coming out at once, it was just a cloud of black wings. It didn’t stop for about an hour, until the last bat came stumbling out of the mountain, it was impressive, but creepy at the same time. There had to be so many holes, so much dark, undiscovered space that nobody ever saw before, the thought of it made me shiver. Matched with the horror stories of the Khmer Rouge, even the beautiful pagoda couldn’t convince me to stay any longer.

In the evening I went to the local circus school what was very impressive. It was all about the processing of the past and the crimes against humanity under which the society had to suffer. Today there are barely old people to be seen on the streets, so many died and the society is young but nevertheless influenced by their parents, which suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. I never realize it that much, but a girl told me that she had been so shocked to come to Cambodia for the first time as she had travelled in Vietnam and Thailand before and she couldn’t see old people anywhere. It seemed to her that something was wrong and odd about the country and only after some time she realized that this was the things that had bothered her. In the circus school there was singing, dancing, acting and acrobatic and I was highly impressed by the talent of the young children from the villages. When they continue to be trained in the circus, they can later work in the official, professional circus in Phnom Penh or Siem Reap. I was lucky to see the performance, as they only have one per week, but that was surely the reason why it was so good and the children seemed to have so much fun with everything they were doing.

The next day I left Battambang and went to Koh Kong. As I love hiking, I wanted to go and see the Jungle there. A man whose name is Alex Gonzalez-Davidson that comes originally from Spain has lived there for 20 years and founded an NGO with the name “Mother Nature”. He speaks fluent Khmer and has prevented the jungle from being destroyed by deforestation many times just as raised awareness with making many movies in Khmer to show the people the preciousness and rarity of the area. He was so popular within the Khmer people, because he really made an effort to learn their language and culture and became one of them. Today he is a celebrity, especially on facebook you can read only positive response towards the things he is doing. When the Cambodian government wanted to build a dam in Koh Kongs rain forest area, he organized a protest with so many people, that it was not possible for the send people to take the measurements and plans. After that, the government refused to extend Alexs visa and he had to leave the country, by military force. The response of the Khmer people was heart breaking: “I was there to protect him and went with him to the airport to protect him from the military. I wanted to protect him as he protected our nature.” Or “We should not kick Alex out of the country, we should give him a citizenship. He did more for the Khmer people than all of the politicians today together.” I was very interested in his case and what happened to him and the project then. That was also why I wanted to see the place with my own eyes. I hopped out of the bus on my way to the provincial capitol of Koh Kong. From there on I had to take a little boat that would drive me down a river and to another village from where on it was possible to walk in the jungle. With the fisher boat I was two hours on the water. It was the most amazing landscape and I could see, why people would risk their life to preserve it. Cambodia is so flat, that you could see mountains nowhere I have been before. Now they surrounded me. It was like floating in a giant valley down into a world where there is no sign of civilization. Now and then there were huts by the waterside, framed by the long branches of giant trees. The people there lived with the nature in a way I never saw it before. The boat driver explained to me, that the river was their source of life, where they found nearly all their nutrients. When I arrived in the small village and got off the boat, I was welcomed by a family that told me I could stay the night at their house. I always thought hat my family lived in humble conditions, but this was a whole new level. I was sleeping on the floor and all we had to eat was rice and potatoes. The next morning I went with a group of five, two locals and two other people that had come to the village the day before, in the jungle. The path first led through a valley and it was incredibly hot. Our guard told us we should watch out for snakes and five minutes later a giant yellow animal passed our way, about 20 centimetres from my foot. The locals showed us which plants we could eat, which were poisonous and which you could use as a remedy. We cut some branches that contained drinking water and found sweet berries that we ate all day long. After the valley we came in the jungle and it was just like one would imagine an authentic rain forest to be like. In the crowns of the trees you could see colourful birds flying, the trees were so thick that five people could not lay their arms around and giant stones in the shapes of animals kept lying in our way. Every time we passed a smaller stream, the guides just lay down in the water and drank with their bare hands. In the evening we arrived at our camp, a little hut where we hang up our hammocks. Nearby was a giant waterfall and we all went swimming there before the night fell. From one point that was about seven meters high you could jump in the water and it just felt amazing to get a jungle shower after the whole day walking. Then we brew tea with the things we collected and cooked some rice with vegetables. Before we all went to sleep, the guard told us that we should be prepared for tigers, bears and even elephants to interrupt us at night, but I was so tired, I fell asleep in two seconds. The next day we continued our way and had to cross a river over stones that were so slippery, I was sure I was going to fall. Then we climbed up a rock and suddenly had a great view around the whole area, as it was still early morning, the fog was hanging in the trees and the screams of monkeys filled the air. All you could see was a green landscape, but it was like the air was vibrating with all the hidden life underneath. I was so glad to having come there and seen the place that I heard so much about in the media with my own eyes. It is a world so innocent and untouched, it would be crime to destroy it for the sake of money. I felt like I had to do something, change something myself. But it sometimes feels like it is far easier to do bad than good. I imagined the elephants dying when the river had no water anymore and the tigers not being able to hunt anymore, because there were no trees to hide behind. All the beautiful flowers smashed under the weight of a steamroller. It was so hard to leave the jungle again to go back to reality. I knew I could never come back and see the place like I left it.

Heaven and Hell

Arriving in Phnom Penh after having been on the country side for a considerable amount of time, is like entering a whole new world. Everything is overwhelming. You are immediately stuck in the traffic that always makes me feel suicidal, as there are no rules that are followed and everyone is trying to arrive at their destination as fast as possible. It is always an adventure; you can never be sure where you will land in the end. You will go past streets that are filled with stores that are all selling one and the same thing, as they believe in the magic of bargaining. In that way you can walk down the whole street, in search of a screwdriver, asking for the price in every store. This is of course only possible, if the same product is sold at the same place. In Germany we would find this inconvenient, as we had to drive through the whole city to do our shopping, but here the rules are quite different. It is all about finding the cheapest things. So there is for example a street that sells exclusively screwdrivers. Another option is to go to the market, where you can find basically everything. The O’Russei market in Phnom Penh is a giant shopping mall, made of sideways that seem to lead into a labyrinth that will never let you out again. There you can buy Vietnamese coffee in giant plastic bags that look like they contain flower soil, false moustaches, false money and false passports, old lamps that might hide genies living inside, rise wine that contains snake and scorpion blood or false teeth. I saw many times, how tourists try to lower the price when they are at the market. They look at the goods, turn them around, weigh them in their hand, so long until the seller really knows that they are willing to pay any price for it. When Rathana is going to shop at the market, for example when she is buying a bag, she is looking at it for about a second, taking it with thumb and index finger, just to let it fall down in the next second. Then she asks in the most casual kind of way how much it will cost. When she hears the price she laughs and then turns around to walk away. After two meters, the shop women gets nervous, after three meters she shouts a different price after her. Rathana keeps walking, until the price is down where she wants it to be. Then she comes back, pays and takes the bag with her. That is the way to do it. In my opinion this takes long years of practice, but Cambodian women really have the skill to to do it. They also love to compare their groceries, talking about who made the better deal for the fresh mangos.

Phnom Penh can be a frightening place, full of fortune tellers, herbal witches and tuc tuc drivers that are shouting at you and grabbing your bag, trying to charge you more money than you would need to drive on a train from Munich to Augsburg. Tuc Tuc drivers can earn a lot of money when they speak decent English. As the education system in Cambodia is still so bad that nobody who is completing it, is really competitive on the global market and nations like Thailand and Vietnam lie far ahead, most English speakers work in the tourism sector, mostly as tuc tuc drivers. That is why some of the tuc tuc drivers have really good English skills, but can’t read a map and don’t know anything about the city. They have no idea where they are going to, when it is not the royal palace or the S21. They are coming from the country side and try to earn a living. There is no license needed and who is doing a good job, can save up enough money to eventually open up a shop. Some of them begin to be very creative when it comes to collecting customers. They speak some sentences in German, French and Spanish and shout them when you are walking past them. One once said to me: “Ein Tuc Tuc Fräulein?”. Another tuc tuc driver had a sign in his hands saying: “I won’t shout at you, follow you or annoy you in any other way, but if you need a tuc tuc, I’m right here.” Every tourist shop sells a t-shirt that says: “No tuc tuc today”. The tuc tucs are a great example that shows Phnom Penh can be both, heaven and hell. It depends if you can find your way around, know some people and look at the right places. Then the air polluted, skyscraper front can suddenly turn into an idyllic place, full of art, music, fashion and creative ideas.

I went to Phnom Penh last Friday and met Vichka. It is so nice to have her, as she lives in Phnom Penh since five years and really knows all about the city. Additionally I am just half as scared when I am driving on her motorbike. Her flat is in an apartment high up in a skyscraper and she has a large balcony from where you can see the whole city. For the first time since I got to Cambodia, I went to the cinema. Vichka persuaded me to watch a horror movie with her, “The Boy Next Door” and I basically screamed the whole movie through, what reminded me of why I normally rather watch Disney films. Before we went home for dinner we visited an art gallery (what I really, really missed too, as I am an eighteen year old girl that deliberately decides to spend her free time going to the museum) and then we went shopping for groceries. I stepped into a real supermarket with air-conditioning and loudspeakers, advertising the latest discounts. Vichka went for the section with the meat and I reluctantly followed after her. It was like going in an aquarium; everywhere I could see fishes in the most shining colours bubbling behind their glasses. Not only fishes, but crabs and tortoises, too. I couldn’t stop Vichka from buying some frogs that were on sale, but at least the tortoise stayed behind the glass. Apparently frogs taste just like chicken.

I visited Buntha when I came home from Phnom Penh, and we tried the 30 day Youtube yoga challenge. It was pretty hilarious. We both sat inside her house on a mat and tried to out our limbs in the weirdest positions, laughing so much that I was sure we trained our abs more than anything else. The next day, I realized that I couldn’t stand up anymore. I had sore muscles everywhere, it hurt so much I was positive I would have to spend the whole day in bed. Only with pure willpower I managed to get up and face the daily challenges. It has gotten better, but now, five days later, I can still feel it. Yoga is torture.

On Sunday I met Sopheak, because she invited me to come and visit her family on the countryside. Her sister would get engaged. We left Takeo at around four o’clock in the afternoon and squeezed in a little bus that was so stuffed that I just can’t describe it. Just so much: I was basically sitting on a (living) duck. When the driver dropped us off, we waited for one of Sopheaks cousins to pick us up. On our way to the house of Sopheaks parents, I had to stop three times at several houses to meet all of Sopheaks relatives. Every time I had to sit down, eat and drink something and answer all kind of questions about myself. They wanted to know if my parents were as tall as me, if I was married already and why I didn’t eat any meat. Just the usual inquiry. When we arrived at the second house that belonged to Sopheaks great uncle, their neighbors had just killed a dog and roasted it over the fire. I couldn’t sit there and watch that, it was just too horrible. Additionally the dog was rather skinny and wouldn’t offer much meat anyway. I get that they are poor and why should it be okay that we eat rabbits, pigs and cows, but not dogs? It’s just that I am used to dogs being treated as dearly loved animals and not food. Sopheaks aunt asked if I didn’t like dogs and preferred cat. Sometimes situations are just too bizarre. When we arrived at the house of Sopheaks parents, we were apparently just half an hour away from the Vietnamese border. And there were really Vietnamese ships secured on the harbour of the little river. This might be the most uncommon way to get over the border as a tourist. There were so many mosquitos around me, I felt like I wouldn’t have any blood left the next day. I got everyone to laugh when I said in Khmer “Mosquitos love me, but I don’t love them.”, “Mu srolaing knyom, bondtai kynom meun srolaing mu.” We all slept in the kitchen on the floor and when I asked Sopheak where I could get water from, she said I should just use the brown rain water from the jar. Well then. The next morning I woke up from the smell of food. Everyone around me was still asleep, but Sopheaks mother was cooking some meters next to our sleeping place. I got up to see if I could help her and when I looked in the pot, I saw that she was cooking ants. That was too much for me. Frogs, dogs and ants in less than two days? I turned around and tried to get some more sleep.

As soon as the first guests arrived, we all went upstairs and placed trays with fruit and rice, just as smoking sticks everywhere. Then the monks came to bless the engaged couple and their hands were intertwined by ribbons. Everyone had to come afterwards and offer the couple a donation. When I was sitting in the crowd, listening to the monk chanting, several elderly women came and began touching my skin. I tried to ignore it, while the smoke of the joss sticks was filling my nostrils. Little children were crawling over me and the sound of the monks chanting was filling the air. The beauty of the atmosphere during these ceremonies is special. It is like you can feel the holy spirits personalizing in the smoke that is curling in the air, laying a mysterious atmosphere over everything you can see. Everyone seems to be in a state of inner peace, murmuring the words they know since many years. These processions give them a feeling of identity and belonging. It is even more powerful to see all these people connected through their thoughts, history, tradition, fates and bloodlines, celebrating together because they believe in the ever returning circle of life, the karma and dharma. It is something magic. And no terror regime could make the people forget and give up these customs.

 

A big problem in Cambodia are the mines. They are still lying around everywhere and nobody can be sure that it is safe to walk aside the tracks. Sometimes there are signs that say that mines are around and you bring yourself in life danger, if you overstep the border. Everywhere in Cambodia you can see people that have missing limbs. There are just so many mines, too many for the organizations that are busy with removing them. With the little the government is doing to clear the fields, they have no chance against the amount that is still hidden in the landscapes. The most horrible thing is, when it is child victims that you are seeing. Their future is so determined by their disability. A new movement opens up more and more centers for mine victims, where they can learn a job that serves the community, but only a very small percentage of people have the luck to join one of these programs. Some people even moved away from their homeland after the war, as it was just not safe for them there anymore. As bad as the situation is, it gets better. One thing that the mines brought to the country, is the prevention of the rain forestation. Nobody dared to walk far up in the mountains, or the jungle, that is why the nature there is still pure and untouched, the flora and fauna still of an incredible variety. You can find tigers, sun bears and gibbons in the wild nature, more species have survived than in most of other development countries.

We finally finished the Cinderella play this week. It was a long process of getting the children from reading to acting, making Cinderella loose her shoe and the fairy swing her magic wand, but in the end it worked out. I was glad to having made two different casts for the play, meaning two queens, two kings and two stepmothers, so that they could help each other and develop a kind of competitiveness, when they see that their counterpart already knew all the lines already. My next project is going to be a reading group. I already have one with older children with whom I meet up every week, but this time I gave all the 28 children in my class from 5 to 6 a different book, that they need to prepare in one week. They have three questions that they need to answer: “What is the story about?”, “How can you describe the main characters?”, “What can you learn from it?”. I want them to stand in front of the class and hold the presentation, speaking free about the book. This is something they would never actually do in school, what’s they reason why it is even more important that we are doing it. Being able to read a book and talk about it, can be a skill so precious, it teaches you about life itself.

We continued with our cooking workshop, making pancakes with banana. They looked so delicious and fluffy, I wish I could have eaten them all. I don’t know what is the secret of pancakes, but they seriously are much more delicious than crepes and this is a fact. Next time we are going to make spaghetti, I promised.

I dedicated the last week, to clean up the Learning Center and sort the books in the library. It might be a Sisyphos work, but well… the cooking books were in the science department and everything else was pretty much the same messed up pandemonium. The longer I am working for Bookbridge, the more I am convinced that it is actually not a good idea to donate English books to the Learning Centers. For instance, the way the books are brought into the country (with containers by ship) is very bad for the environment. Then most of the books (for example Shakespeare or Jane Austen) are far too difficult for the children to read. And not only these examples, many books are simply not fitting for the children that come into the Learning Centers. I am very happy that we got a lot of Khmer books in the past months what changed the atmosphere in the library drastically. The children are beginning to actually sit down and read, rather than look at the pictures and start to borrow the books. More and more children from the surrounding villages come to make library cards and the lines in front of Rathanas desk are getting longer on a daily basis. I know that in my library in Germany, there is one shelf for books in English and that’s it. After the Khmer Rouge killed nearly every person in the country with education, there nearly are no parents left that teach their children about the joy of reading. They don’t grow up reading, have no books at home, nobody who is reading bed time stories to them. It is not natural for them to just begin reading. And surely not in English. We also should not forget, that they didn’t only have to learn a whole new language, but a whole new alphabet what makes it even more difficult. How wonderful is it though, to see the children coming to read? That is all we can really ask for and when they begin to read easy books in English (maybe even on their own) then we should see how special this actually is. In my opinion we should replace the eight shelfs with English books with Khmer books and offer one shelf with English books instead. And we should buy them in Cambodia to support the local market.

I wonder sometimes, how so many people can live on the same earth, smile the same way, cry the same way, have a heart that beats the same way and seek for love and happiness… yet we still pretend to be so different from one another. I have learned, that there are many more resemblances than differences between humans. We live between heaven and hell and some of us might turn their face to the wrong side of life. We should show everyone the same respect, help and support each other, rather than make things so much more difficult than they actually are.

The Gone And The Glorious

Norodom Sihanouk  

If there is a topic that all Cambodians can agree upon, then it is the king. Norodom Sihanouk was involved in every historical turn over the last 70 years in the countries history. It seems like all the ups and downs in his life had no influence on the relationship between him and the Cambodian people. Last week I was at the market and saw an elderly man sitting in front of his Khmai noodles, looking like they didn’t taste all that much. On his t-shirt was the print of king Sihnaouk and when he saw that I was mustering it, he suddenly began to grin. He pointed on the head and gave me a thumbs up. In every house in the country is a picture of Angkor Wat and Sihanouk on the wall, sometimes accompanied by pictures of his wife and son. The reason why his popularity is so widespread is, that most of the Cambodians think that he is an Ancestor of the great kings of Angkor. This means he is a god-king and his positing predestined. In 1941, when Norodom was 18 years old, the French colonial government appointed him king. He wouldn’t have been the first choice, as there were others far before him in the line of succession, but the French thought of him as a good candidate who could function as a marionette that would act like they wanted him to. The reason for this assumption was his lifestyle. He was interested in the beautiful things in life: art, theatre, music, movies and women. He spent his time going to parties instead of caring about politics and everyone believed that he would keep up this lifestyles after entering his duty. Even today, after his dead in 2012, he is known as the choreographer of the royal ballet, film director, actor, supporter of the classic Cambodian art and as a writer of dearly loved screenplays. He also wrote articles for the own governmental press and composed music for several LPs. Once he said that he could live without everything, besides luxury. His website where he posts, amongst other things, his own opinions on certain subjects, is highly popular within the public. Every citizen who searches for information on a topic first looks what Sihanouk is saying to that. On this website he for example openly announced his support for gay marriage, as Cambodia was a liberal democracy. He seems like a gifted personality, that always had the aim of doing his best to let the arts bloom and flourish. His politics were a little bit like his lifestyle, the changed, they differed, they never settled on one course or one opinion. Over the years he changed his alliances, temporarily designed from his duty as king to found a new political party with which he got 83 per cent of the votes. Between 1955 and 1970 he practically reigned over Cambodia as an absolute ruler. No matter who I ask what their opinion of Sihanouk is, Kadet, the market women or one of my students, every one answers me with: “Good, I think he’s very good.” And when I ask them why, what makes him so good, they have no answer. He is just an inviolable personality that stands over the rules of criticism. In March 1970 Sihanouk was overthrown by Lon Nol who was supported by the Americans. Sihanouk was at this time in Paris and moved afterwards to his exile in Peking, where he formed a new party the “Front Uni National du Kampuchéa”, that contained amongst others the Khmer Rouge. After Pol Pot founded “Democratic Kampuchea”, Sihanouk was appointed head of state again and returned to Phnom Penh. After Sihnaouk realized a part of what the Khmer Rouge had actually planned with Cambodia, he expressed his criticism and was put under arrest. He was not allowed to leave his house in Phnom Penh till the end of the reign. During the ruling of the Khmer Rouge, between 1975 to 1979, five of Sihanouks children and at least 14 grandchildren of his were killed. After Vietnam freed Cambodia he went in exile to China and founded a new party, the FUNCINPEC (Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indépendant, Neutre, Pacifique, et Coopératif). During the peace process from 1991 to 1993, Sihanouk became head of state again. 1993 Sihnaoul was appointed king for the second time and Cambodia became a constitutional monarchy. In 2004 Sihanouk resigned because of health issues and left his throne for his son Norodom Sihamoni. Many people say that this, like many things in his life before was a political move and he went on reigning as king-father until his death. Looking back on his life, his opportunistic and unprincipled seesaw policies in which he changed alliances between East and West can only be understood, if one looks at his two most important principles. First, he wanted to keep Cambodia independent, especially from his neighbors Vietnam and Thailand, what has mostly historical reasons. Second, the maintenance of the home and foreign peace politics. After the big ceremony to cremate his bones in 2012, his popularity didn’t decrease. He stays one of the most extravagant and shimmering personalities of Cambodia. One quote by Italian author Oriana Fallaci might describe him better, than his whole biography ever could: “Hearing him speak is so fun, reassuring I dare say. You can say all you like about Sihanouk: that he’s an atrocious liar, a madman, a fraud, a swashbuckler, an international blot. You may think that, but you cannot deny how in this age in which the political arena seems to generate only dull, obtuse and boring characters with no imagination, he’s a kind of miracle.”

Another famous person that lives on in the hearts of many Cambodians is Sinn Sisamouth. He is considered the “King of Cambodian music”. During the 1950s and 70s was his main creation period. It is said that we wrote thousands of songs, his son Sinn Chaya claims, “At least one for every day he was famous.” The master tapes of his studio recordings were destroyed during the time of the Khmer Rouge, but his work lives on in recordings. He sang most of his songs with his female counterpart Ros Soreysothea, which was declared by Sihanouk, to be the Golden Voice of the kingdom. Today many of their most loved pieces are covered and newly interpreted by topical artists. His songs had elements of Khmer traditional music, just as rhythms of blues and rock n’ roll. He was killed during the period of the Khmer Rouge, just as all the other musicians, dancers, painters, writers, actors… and members of the royal family.

Sinn Siasamouth

Ros Soreysothea

Sometimes when we have no guests at home, when there are no relatives that come to visit, my host parents talk about the imd of the Khmer Rouge. All I can do is sit there, with wide eyes and listen to stories that seem so incredible, I can’t believe them. Siphen told the story of when she was sleeping behind a hill with her father. The Vietnamese army and the Khmer Rouge were about to clash and they tried to stay away from the fight. Siphen smelled something very strange in the night and when she woke up and they walked to the other side of the hill, there were three dead bodies lying there. One of her brothers died during Pol Pots reign, another could flee over the border to Thailand and claim to be a high ranking official in Cambodia that needed saving as he spoke French. Her last brother survived the Khmer Rouge period and lives next to Siphens family these days with his own wife and grand children. Siphen knows how to shoot a gun, because she was trained in the army for three months. After the war was over they had nothing, Siphen got her first bicycle when she was 22 years old. Mach said that he used to collect paper from everywhere, the description of building utensils or cartons. He would dry them in the sun and sew them together to use it as a book. After the war, nearly every family had guns at home. Both Mach and Pou Pon had two. One day, there was a thief coming to their house to steal some chicken. To that time, you could never be sure if the thieves had guns themselves. When the chicken began to make noise, both Pou Pon and Mach were out of bed and began shooting. Mach said that you could see the lights of the gun bullets in the night. Siphen fled downstairs with Sreynoch on her arm to hide under a bed. One didn’t know, who the thieves were and how many of them. Today Cambodians don’t have guns any more, it is forbidden by law, but instead they all have many, many dogs to guard the house. Mach once said, that he actually liked it better when his life was very simple and all he had to do was look after the cows (they collated them after the war, as they were just running around free and didn’t belong to anyone) and work on the fields. Today his life got so much more complicated and he has more to do than ever before. “The more you own, the more you have to care about.”, he uses to say.

Mach and Siphen are two of the few people that actually have education in their generations, read in their free time and are interested to learn new things. So many others were killed and it sometimes seems like a miracle that some survived. When children come to school they have to start from the very bottom. Nothing is given to them by their family, they have nobody at home who encourages them to learn. This makes it very difficult to motivate the children and persuade them to try new things. Cambodias future lies within the hands of these children and hopefully they will write Cambodian history and overcome that boundaries of their birth.

Cambodias history has changed its people. And they try to hold on to the things that don’t change. Sinn Sisamouths music for example, or their king that is sent by the gods like the glorious architects of Angkor.

Robinson Crusoe Alias Me

Cambodia’s kitchen is made of such an impressive variety of flavors, I never get tired of it. I remember when I was travelling in Thailand with my family, I adored the food so much, I would wish to be able to beam myself back there for every lunch break. I imagined how many wonderful things I could buy myself I could get in Germany maybe a disgusting potato salad for. Especially for vegetarians, the Southeast Asian countries are like heaven. Of course there is meat in every traditional meal, but when you make the effort and cook yourself, there are millions of spices, herbs, fruits and vegetables to buy at every market. I came to the conclusion that I actually like rice more than noodles. Not without reason do Cambodians say: “Nijam bay” (eat rice) when they say they are going to get a meal. One time when I was eating with Sopheak, Chanthou and Pereah lunch on a bask mat on the floor; I stood up to get some water when suddenly all of them began to scream. I looked around in panic, expecting to find a rat somewhere, but then I realized they were all starring at me. I was confused, what had happened in the two seconds since I stood up? I touched my head, because I thought that there might be a giant spider. But no, no spider there. “You can’t walk over the rice!”, Pereah finally exclaimed to reveal the secret. Walk over the rice? Oh sure, as we are eating on the floor, I had put my foot over my plate to get to the other side of the room. “The rice is holy!”, said Chanthou. “It’s like our mother!”, added Sopheak. I remembered when Sopheak told me the story of when she once let the rice get burned and her mother got really angry at her and said she would never find a husband when she couldn’t cook rice. Rice is serious business in Cambodia.

One of my favourite desserts in Cambodia is pumpkin in coconut milk. In Germany I didn’t like pumpkins at all. Especially pumpkin soup was one of the worst dishes I could possibly imagine. In Cambodia I suddenly love the vegetable. There are so many never thought of dishes that you can make with it, there’s no way to get tired of eating it. The pumpkin dessert is very easy to make, you chop the pumpkin and then boil it in water. Afterwards you add sweet milk and pour coconut milk over it all. It’s like heaven. I don’t know how I should ever survive coming back to Germany and not having the amazing food anymore. I will continue wishing to be able to beam myself back for having lunch, probably.

One thing that everyone who has spent some time with me knows is, that I really love quotes. I’m not sure if this is really of any value for my future life, but once I like them they are stuck in my head and I can’t get them out even if I wanted to. I decided that we needed some inspirational quotes in the Learning Center and began to draw posters in different colours to underline it. I started with Ghandis “Be the Change You Want to See in the World” and “Educating the mind Without Educating the Heart is No Education at all” by Aristotle and finished with “A Good Education Will Stay with you Forever”. I was quite pleased to see, that the children are actually stopping to read the quotes.

Once I wrote about the short movie that I made with two of my students, Nareth and Lisa, about the rules in the learning centres. Now Sokhan asked me to do one more, but this time in Khmer. We might be putting the movie on the tablets that we are getting donated next year. I still think that it is a very good idea and having the movie in Khmer, in that way you can make sure that everyone understands it.

I am learning the present continuous right now with my students from 3 to 4 and I gave them 20 new verbs to learn with it. They insisted that they would only learn them for the next day, if I learned them in Khmer. I thought it was a deal and sat down to learn them all. When I came in class the next day, I had to pronounce every single one of the words in five different words before an “aaaaah”-sound went through the class. It is so frustrating, really. Just to give one example of how hard it is to pronounce the words is the sentence “Can I help you?” – “Dta knyom juiy neak?”. When you pronounce it just a little bit different it ends up meaning “Can I f*ck you?” – Dta knyom joiy neak?”. I can’t understand how they can make two such words so similar, but whatever. Maybe they wanted to have something to laugh about.

For New Year I went to Sihanoukville, to meet Sam and Garlaine there, two girls that are volunteering for the same organization as Stacy and that I met at our Bookbridge workshop. I left at the 31^st of December to not be missing in school longer than necessary. First I put my backpack on my shoulders (I don’t know how it survived the last year with me, I didn’t have much mercy with it) and biked all the way to the bus stop down national road number two. When the bus finally came (one and a half hours later of course), there were no seats anymore. I told the bus driver that I could sit on the floor, because it didn’t make much of a difference to me. The man looked at me completely shocked about the fact that a ‘barang’ would sit on the floor. I ended up in the alley between the seats on a tiny plastic chair. I didn’t turn out to be the only false passenger. Behind me were 10 other Cambodians on plastic chairs. The chairs were very low of course, so I kind of felt like a giant on a dwarf furniture. When we arrived in Kampot, I had to change to a taxi. The taxis in Cambodia are really incredible. They try to fit as many people inside as humanly possible, meaning that there is one person between the driver and the door, one person where the hand break is, two people on the second chair in the front and surely five people in the back. So it’s nine people in total in a tiny car and I was told that it’s not unusual for them to put eleven in it. Don’t ask me where the people are then, probably in the trunk.

During my time travelling I had desperately tried to call Garlaine. She left for Sihanoukville the day before, but every time I dialled the number, I got a message that it was not possible to build a connection. When I finally arrived in Sihanoukville at 4 pm on New Years day, I was pretty much in the worst mood imaginable. I had been for more than two hours in a car without air conditioning, squeezed between a pregnant women and a stinking man, not being able to move an inch just to find myself alone in a town I didn’t know without anyone I knew, on New Years day. Additionally I was hungry and thirsty and still sweating. I began walking down the road and went through some backyards to get closer to where I suspected the beach to be. I got a coconut from a women that seemed to sense that I was feeling miserable. I just sat down on the roadside, sipping my coconut, looking like seven days of rainy weather. I began to wish I had stayed at home. Now I imagining myself sleeping in a horrible cheap guest house, celebrating New Years all alone (part of that was to become true). I felt so miserable; I nearly started to cry and pour tears in my coconut. Suddenly I heard a voice behind me. “Do you know if there is any place where we can sleep this night? We asked everywhere, but it seems like everyone on this planet is in Sihanoukville for New Years and it’s all booked.” I turned around and looked at a girl that had the same hairstyle like my little sister. Brown and cut under the ear, so that the top would look mischievously up from under the chin. She smiled at me and raised her eyebrows at the same time expectantly. Her friend next to her was smiling too. She had curly blonde hair and a lot of freckles. “I have no idea.”, I said honestly. “So where do you sleep then?”, asked the blonde girl with a French accent. “I don’t know… honestly”. I told them the story of how I couldn’t call Garlaine and didn’t know what to do. The girl with the brown hair smiled and shrugged her shoulders: “So you are going to sleep at the beach with us?” I considered what other choices I really had and stood up. “my name is Malin, nice to meet you.” Their names were Loelia and Emma and they were both French. Sometimes I feel like travelling is not about arriving somewhere and taking pictures of the things that millions of people saw before you, but about meeting people along the way. That’s what really makes a journey unique and unforgettable. We headed off in direction beach when we walked past a cheap looking guesthouse. In fact, the most abandoned looking guesthouse I ever saw in my life. The guy that was standing in front of it, with barely any clothes on and a yellow sign in his hands to advertise a New Years Party, screamed at us when we were barely standing two meters away from him: “Rooms for only one dollar!! Don’t miss this chance and don’t miss our party!!!”. “You still have rooms?”, asked Emma astonished. It turned out that the room he had talked about was a tiny chamber with a story bed in which an infinite number of people could fit, as the matrasses were not divided. In the door was a guy that was just shaving his head and the drawer that we could use to put our important things inside was half-broken. Well then. I kind of didn’t care because we wouldn’t actually sleep there as it was New Year and we could find something else the next day. We tried to get away from the bald guy and get to the beach as fast as possible. We could already see, that it was completely full with people. I don’t know how many, but it was gigantic. We decided to go swimming with the last rays of sunlight that shone down on us. We climbed some rocks to get away from the crowd and jumped in the water. I always loved swimming, no matter where I am and no matter how cold the water is, I always have the urge to jump in. That’s probably how I ended up swimming in the Tonle Sap. It was just wonderful, I somehow didn’t feel so miserable anymore and I seemed to just click with Lia and Emma right from the start. Afterwards they explained me that they didn’t have a lot of money and were therefor mainly eating coconuts what was absolutely fine with me. Coconuts are just amazing. (I might have mentioned that before). We were talking about all kinds of things, realizing that we had a lot in common, beginning with our love for spontaneous decisions. When we walked to the part of the beach that was filled with people, it was already dark. Once again I was overwhelmed by the number of people. There seemed to be no empty spot left on the beach. They had already begun with the firework. Of course you normally start to send off the firework at midnight, but here the whole sky was filled with more lights than I ever saw before in my life at seven o’clock. They also had lanterns that were floating in the sky, mingling with the real stars. They looked just like the ones from Tangled and seemed to be the last thing missing to create this special atmosphere. I was astonished to see them all. Lia, Emma and I got a heart shaped lantern and lit it in the water. The whole sky was spectacular and it should go on like this till midnight. We tried to find our way through the crowd, passing by hundreds of people. At one place we got free drinks, at another we could paint pictures on ourselves with glowing colour and at another we were invited to build a sandcastles, decorated with hundreds of candles. Then we went dancing to WESTERN music and basically laughed the whole time, imitating all kind of dance styles from different parts of the world. Suddenly I saw Garlaine and Sam and the world was okay again. We greeted each other and Garlaine told me that she went swimming in the morning and when she came out of the water, her whole bag was gone, with mobile phone, key, cards, money etc. She didn’t seem to be bothered about it. I don’t think anyone could be sad at this place at this time. Half an hour later it was midnight and when it wasn’t all crazy before, it was definitely out of it’s mind by then. There were colours everywhere, people dancing shouting, screaming and in front of the shore was a giant construction that was carrying the words “Happy New Year 2015”. I don’t have to explain what happened when they set them on fire.

All in all I managed to get one hour of sleep in the prison chamber and then I escaped with Lia and Emma. We decided to take the morning ferry to Koh Rong, the island in front of Sihanoukville. We were basically the only people on the boat, behind us was a hung-over guy who was splashed with water every time we hit a wave and didn’t care about it at all. When we arrived at the island, we were greatly disappointed. The whole beach was plastered with guesthouses that had signs outside, advertising daily parties and cheap flat rate drinking offerings. We went to one of the bars and sat down. The guy at the table next to ours had a long beard and was reading a newspaper. Lia tapped on his shoulder: “Sorry, you wouldn’t know if there is a calmer place on the island, would you?” “Calmer place?”, he asked. Then he looked at us judgemental as if to make up his mind about something. “How good are you on feet?” “Amazing!”, said Lia immediately. The guy brought a map and showed us a way that seemed to lead straight across the whole island and to the other side. “This beach is called long beach. That has two reasons. First: it is a very long beach. And Second: It been a long time since anyone went there and actually came back”. He started to laugh and winked at us. “How long to get there?”, asked Lia. “Depends on how fast you are. Maybe two hours?” “Let’s go!”, I said. “The sooner we get going, the sooner we are going to arrive.” After some time we found the right track and left the tourist hell behind us. The path was really steep and we passed two water buffalos that were having a nap right in our way. We kept on going and soon the sweat was pouring down from everywhere. That was nothing like going hiking in the Alps. My backpack seemed to be 10 times heavier and the air felt like it was actually so hot, it could burn my skin. When we were enclosed by the jungle it was a little bit better. Not so hot anymore and it was possible to breath. Several times the way parted in front of us and we had to choose which way we should take. It was like in a labyrinth, so we decided to always walk on the right site. We had to climb over fallen trees that blocked our way or push branches to the side that were scraping our faces. Soon we were so high up, we could see the sea again. It was a beautiful day, the first of the New Year. We kept walking when we suddenly saw a sign in front of us. It said, “This is the windy rock. When you feel like you are son going to die, just sit down for a while and enjoy the view!” I walked closer to inspect the rock. Under the rock it just went steep on into nothingness. Maybe this was the highest point of the island. The rock was very long and the surface cool. I climbed up and let my legs hang over the free space. Lia and Emma also came up behind me. From here on we could see the turquoise water of the shore of the long beach. This was just too good, the breeze tussled my hair and I drank a big sip of water. Emma learned German in school and we started to talk in a mixture of French, German and English. They started to teach me “Aux Champs Elysees” and I taught them “Über den Wolken”. When we were able to keep walking, we were singing as loud as possible, certain that nobody could hear us. Fortunately we only had to walk downhill from now on and soon arrived at the beach. All of us were stunned. I didn’t believe that beaches like these existed any longer. The sand was really purely white, no rubbish, no waste was there, the water was crystal clear and the palm trees were full of coconuts. We started to walk down the beach. After an hour we saw two people that had hung hammocks up in the trees and were cooking lunch. They greeted us friendly and when we had gone out of ear sight Emma exclaimed: “Let us do the same! We can build a house here!” Lia and I immediately enthusiastically agreed on the idea. From now on we kept watch if we could find a good place to stay. After another hour we found one. Two trees had grown bended to the beach with their branches intertwined. We ate the rice with vegetable that we had bought in Sihanoukville and began searching for wood. There were unexpectedly, a lot of things that we could use to build our hut. Wood, strings, palm leaves, coconut shells… We worked hard, especially Emma who came several times with monstrous trunks out of the jungle, and soon we had a true Robinson-Crusoe house. I was in love and when Lia put out her mosquito net and we installed it on the point where all our poles came together in the middle of the house looked like we had just made a new invention of a traditional Indian tippi. When the sun began to set, we lay down and watched the colours in the sky. “Isn’t it incredible that the sun is doing this beautiful show every morning and every evening and people are to busy to watch?”, Lia asked. “Yes, incredible. I feel like this is a present that is just for us, that the sun is doing this because she knows she has an audience that is truly watching now.”, I added. I can’t really describe it and even pictures can’t tell what we experienced that evening. It was the most spectacular sunset I had ever seen. It was really as if the sun wanted to say: “Hey! My New Years resolution was to start the month with everything I have.” We didn’t talk any more, everyone of us just stared at the sky, that was changing every moment, to let us see even more spectacular formations. The firework the day before was nothing compared to this. We just laid there for what seemed like an eternity. Emma was the first of us to talk again. She pointed down the beach and there we saw a fire. We realized that we would get really cold without a fire and decided to check out who was there. When we arrived we saw three people sitting around a fire. Their hut looked even nicer than ours. They had made a kind of hut that the Vikings would have appreciated and hung little flowers in empty coconut shells, fruit and vegetable from the ceiling. The two girls, Eleonora and Georgia, that were sitting around the fire were Italian and the guy, Jake, came from Canada. He was dressed like a real hippie, with long colourful clothes and a long grown beard. In his hand he had an ukulele. Eleonora and Georgia, told us that they were camping here for one week already, besides the fact that they had only intended to stay for two days. Now they were planning to stay for one more week and skip Siem Reap on their route, as this place was truly magical and not worth leaving for anything else. We sat down and the guy asked us for our favourite songs by the Beatles. We ordered “Penny Lane”, “Hey Jude”, “Can’t buy me love”, “Eight Days a Week”, “Yellow Submarine” and finally “Let it be”. He could play them all. He asked us for a song that all of us were able to sing. We couldn’t think of any. I suggested that we should try a Disney song. “What about ‘Bare Necessities’?”, Jake asked. Every one of us could sing the lyrics to the song, but only in their own language. First Jake started in English, then Lia and Emma continued in French, then in sung it in German and then Elli and Georgia ended in Italian. It was incredible. We had so much fun, we didn’t even want to walk all the way back to our hut. We decided to meet up with them the next day to explore the island.

In the morning we did yoga at the beach and then meditation to let the soul calm down. I felt like I was buzzing with energy afterwards. After our traditional coconut, we began trekking. There was a way that should apparently lead to a very small fisher village on the island. We found a path and took the chance. Jack had his Ukulele in his hand and invented a new song that went somehow like this: “We don’t know where we are, we don’t know where we go, but we will find our way. We don’t live in the past, we don’t live in the future, we live in this moment as if it was our last.” Jack can play 100 instruments. Whenever he is travelling somewhere he tries to learn the instruments of the country. He already released an album called “Wanderlove” in which he plays songs with a combination of unusual instruments. Completely unexpectedly we stepped all of sudden on an actual road. Half an hour later a truck drove past us. It stopped and the driver gestured for us to climb on top. When well al sat on the loading space the truck continued driving and Jack was playing “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. I looked over the landscape of the island. We drove passed lakes and endless areas of trees. When we finally stopped, we were at the end of the road. In front of us was jungle again. The driver gestured us to walk through the branches. There was a tiny path that we followed down the hill. The beach that we finally arrived at was not very big and the waves were really high. We went swimming of a big flower in the sand and when we came out of the water we began to make a mandala. I drew the outlines in the beach and then we searched shells and flotsam and jetsam that got spilled on the beach to decorate the lines. We put leaves together, searched wood and see tang. It looked stunning in the end. We kept on walking in search of the fishing village and I found about five giant seashells on the way. They were all beautiful and looked like the ones you can buy in stores. The fishing village was just like the one in Takeo that I’ve bin to with Sopheak, Sokna, Pereah and Chanthou. Little huts of wood were built in the water and coloured boats were secured to them with strings. The children came running to greet us and outside of the huts were rows of dry fish. The water seemed to be nor very deep, for meters on no end it seemed to reach in the distance on ankle height. We drank coconuts and played with the children while listening to an old man who was playing the flute.

This night we decided to move to Eleonora and Georgia, simply because we didn’t want to walk all the way back again and because they had a campfire. We went for a night swim and grilled marshmallows with sweet potato and eggplant over the fire. When the moon was high above us, making the stars look pale, I had the idea of making a wish coconut. We all wrote down a wish on a paper and put it in an old coconut shell. Then we put flowers in the opening to close the nut. Everyone of us wrote down the wish. It was then when we realized it was actually full moon. At about three o’clock in the morning Lia shook me awake. “Malin, Malin! Look at the sky!”, I looked up and saw that around the full moon was a kind of white ring, similar to the ones you can make with smoke but it had to be giant. I stopped breathing. It was a kind of natural phenomenon that I never heard of before. “Do you see the green lights down there?”, Lia pointed in the distance, the open sea. “This are the aliens that are coming for us.”, she whispered. We both started to laugh. But then it really seemed like aliens had just arrived from another planet and were about to visit us. I don’t know when we fell back asleep, to continue dreaming about aliens. The next morning we started with our yoga lesson at six o’clock and ate bunch of fruits. Mango, banana, dragon fruit, papaya. I figured that I would get so healthy when I stayed there longer, only walking around all day and eating fruit and rice (and marshmallows). On this day we went snorcheling at the riffs. We couldn’t really see much besides three o four fishes, but the water was so clear, that we could see each other even in 20 meters distance and tried to make handstands and somersault. When we came back to our hut we put our bikini tops on a line to let them try in the sun. We then went to search some coconuts. When we came back the bikini tops were gone. Basically all of them. I couldn’t believe it. We decided not to worry about it, there are worse things to loose than bikini tops I thought, thinking about Garlaine. Lia brought her colours and we began to draw. Emma and Lia are both at an Art Academy in Nancy and very good at drawing. We tried to draw our sunset from memory and then we tried to draw each other. When it was about to get dark again I rushed to the jungle to collect some firewood. I just dived up from under a low branch when I suddenly saw something colourful. In the trees were our bikinitops. All of them hanging from the branches. I called Georgia and she took a photo of it. We couldn’t believe it! We spend the evening decorating our house further. We wrote “Ukulele Bungalow” on the main branch and I added “Million star accommodation, no money wanted.” When we sat around the fire this evening, we played the game when one person has to start telling a story and the other has to continue it. We made up 10 different ones, each crazier than the other. Emma then pointed at the beach and we all fell silent. This evening I saw plankton for the first time. The whole beach was glowing like someone scattered neon colours along the water.

The next morning I took a photo with the ukulele in front of the bungalow. Then I said goodbye to everyone. I had to be back in school Monday. It was really hard to leave, I had the feeling like everything I really needed had been there the last days. When I think about how many wonderful and unusual things happened to me over the passed days, I would never have treated them for a luxury accommodation on the other side of the island. I walked the whole way back, down the beach, to the path we took on the first day and up the mountain. It was even harder than the first time. I told myself I couldn’t stop if I wanted to get the ferry by 9 am. I felt like I was positively about to faint and be surrounded by hallucinations in the middle of the jungle. I was breathing like a locomotive. When I finally arrived at the other side, I felt like I just woke up from a dream. Around me were tourists again, drinking sweet smoothies in the beach bars. And my ship, the backpacker ferry, was just sailing away. Then I saw the fancy speed fairy was at the peer and people were getting in. I rushed to the queue and waited in the line with the suit-case-tourists. The guy at the boarding looked at my ticket for about a nanosecond and I hopped on board. I put my backpack in a corner and took the coconut with our wishes out. I just stood at the reiling, watching the island becoming smaller and smaller. I knew deep in my heart that I would never come back there. In one year they would build a hotel chain on the long beach, the guy with the long hair that had told us about the place had added before we said goodbye to him. I imagined how umbrellas and sunloungers would fill the beach and the jungle where we found our bikinitops would be cut down. I imagined that they would find our little huts and laugh about them, before putting the cement foundation at the very same place. When we were in the middle of the sea I whispered “Let our dreams come true.” and threw the coconut in the foaming waves. I watched the coconut till it was only a tiny dot in the middle of the sea. When I arrived in Shanoukville I was the first to go off board as I never really occupied a seat and headed off with the first motodub driver. I explained him that he should bring me to a Khmer restaurant with traditional food. The best thing about the local places, besides from the good prices, is the free cold drinks that you get there. After I ate I went to the sharing taxi. When I arrived in Kampot, I asked my driver where the bus was. He pointed to a minivan and said that it would drive past Angtasom. The vans are about as big as our VW bus and there are never any tourists in it. I figured I could as well go for it instead of taking the official bus line. I asked the bus driver how much it would be from here to Angtasom. He looked at me and then said it was 10 dollars because of New Year. I told him that New Year had been last Wednesday and today was Sunday. He said it didn’t matter; people like me were still travelling from one place to the other because of it. I shook my head and told him, that this price was crazy and even on New Year itself I wouldn’t have paid that. He didn’t listen at all. I looked him in the eye and said that I didn’t understand why I had to pay more than a Khmer person, as there was no difference between me and them and that I worked as an English teacher and didn’t get paid. This whole conversation we had in Khmer. To that point all the tuc tuc drivers and other hammockers around us were laughing. The driver was raising his eyebrows. “You are the same as a Khmer person?”, he asked me. “I told him that he understood that right. He took my hand and shook it enthusiastically. “You Khmer, I am Khmer! Nice to meet you.” “Nice to meet you too.”, I said. “Two dollars.”, he said and gestured for me to get inside. I breathed out, relieved that this conversation was over. I could live with that. The bus that would have maximally provided space for 6 people in Germany was already stuffed with 15. With horror I watched more and more people get inside. To the time we arrived in Angtasom we were 21 passengers as we stopped for everyone waiting by the wayside. When I got out of the bus I saw that there were 4 people and 10 coconuts sitting on the roof.

When I got home I put my seashells as decoration in front of the door. And then I fell asleep. I had woken up at six in the morning, made yoga, went for swim and a hike before even having had breakfast. This night I dreamed of a pandemonium of impressions that I had collected over the last days.

I felt like I had been kissed by the moon and the stars and would and could never again forget my Robinson Crusoe Days.

Help The Children

This week I want to talk about a topic that I care a lot about. The education system in Cambodia. Yesterday Chanthou asked me to help her with her English homework for university. It was a text that she had to translate and couldn’t understand. It was so full of mistakes, it made my stomach turn. I asked Chanthou where she got the text from and she said her teacher had written it himself. Just to give you an idea about it, here are some sentences:”Strong as lion, like eagle, like tiger you be and reach the horizon.”, “Like mother of yours able bear hard, painful sorrow when she give birth to you, do the same, hard challenge in life mean get the success.” and “Don’t walk with your friends, they have boyfriend, play the facebook, go out to drink from beer. Walk alone, walk to your good thought and to your hard work alone.” I was thinking by myself, that it was really no surprise that she couldn’t translate it. That is exactly the reason, why the children live under such an intense pressure. Additonally there is no way they could learn English, reading a text like this. The truth is, that children are either caught up in this system, studying and trying their best or fail and stop caring at all. Because of that I try to get them to read, sing and act in English. To show the children that learning should not be combined with constant threat and horror. I honestly only began to learn English, when I finally got an English teacher that made me love going into the lessons instead of filling my head with complicated grammar rules that I was about to forget sooner or later. One of my students said to me, he always dreamed about going on a field trip with school, but this is of course not possible. Just as they are not doing any experiments, group work, presentations… all kind of things that make students become interested in a topic and offer social skills that are needed for later life. Schools have no libraries, the classrooms are filled with way to many students and subjects like art or music are not even on the course schedule.

Every time I ask my students what they have planned for the weekend, they tell me that they are going to study part-time. I never heard of this expression before I came to Cambodia, but since then I happen to hear it nearly every day. After some time had passed, I noted it even as being the children’s most “popular” free time activity. They are going back to school, after they finished school, even on Sunday, and study the things that they should have learned in the actual lessons. One might think they only study the subjects that they have difficulties in, like some kind of tutoring, but this is not the case at all. Whenever I ask my students what they like to do for fun, what their hobbies are, they tell me they either study or do housework. Sounds like a quite depressing childhood, doesn’t it? One might ask now why they spend all their time doing things Western children need to be threatened to do. The answer lies in the depths of Cambodia’s broken and corrupt government. Teachers are never getting paid enough, what leads to them coming late for the lessons, because everyone has about three jobs besides teaching. Sometimes they don’t show up to class at all. One of my students told me she would love to play some sports, football or volleyball, but the sports teacher maybe comes twice a year – if they are lucky. In the actual classes the children are taught close to nothing, the teachers just don’t care. Their own life is complicated enough, their own children have difficulties. Most of the students have a destined future, before they are even born. They will work in the factories or become farmers. They don’t bother to change their life, their parents don’t bother, the government doesn’t bother, so why should the teachers? The ones that actually want to pass a test, need to study part-time. Extra classes that the teachers offer, besides the regular hours that cost so much, that most parents can’t afford it. In these classes the teachers are providing the information’s about the exams and actually teach – sometimes. This means that the children are hanging around in school all morning and early afternoon, learning close to nothing, just to actually study in the afternoon, when they can afford it, to come home totally exhausted, not able to do homework or review as they need to help in the house. It is a crazy system and the government is doing nothing to stop it. Claiming to be a democratic country, with a government that sells the land of Cambodia’s farmers to Chinese enterprises, a ruling party that occupies every inch of national road number 2 with advertisement for them and a prime minister that is since over 30 years “democratically” elected, sending his opposition leader to prison. Where is the hope for Cambodia’s children, the new nation that has to transform the country into a nation that is actually able to compete on an international level?

This year 80 per cent of Cambodia’s twelve grade students failed their exam. It seems like nobody actually learned, or wasn’t prepared enough, for the most important test in early adulthood. It was surprisingly the first time since the beginning of the Lon Nol era that it wasn’t possible to cheat. Unbelievingly but true, the government had provided intense security measurements to prevent the children form cheating. Policeman were barricading the classrooms, nobody could have a mobile phone, in some classrooms there were cameras installed… After there had been cases of parents throwing rocks with the answers wrapped around stones through the classroom windows in the past years, there suddenly came a wind of change. And it is encouraging! The incredible number of failures showed the government that they have a problem, even bigger than they always suspected and that something needs to change. The universities protested because of their lack of new students and parents of high-ranking political heads claimed their right of corruption. The test was repeated. It was officially announced that it would be the only time and for the next year the students either had to begin to study seriously, or fail. Naturally this should also include the teachers that would have to start actually preparing ALL their students for the exam. It is a small step, but at least there is change. The beginning of the new school year was postponed for a full month, not only for the eleventh graders, but for every single child in Cambodia and the test was repeated. The results were still not sunny, but better. Hopefully this drama made some people realize, that there is something fundamentally wrong with Cambodia’s education system.

I can only quote a girl that I talked with this week. She studies English literature since two years in the local university and her teachers are all talking Khmer. She told me, since she began to study she knows nothing more than since she graduated. This is actually frightening. Another boy that studies history in Phnom Penh said he learns all about the glorious ancient history of the Angkor period, but when it comes to the Khmer Rouge, the “k’mai gra-horm”, the information is denied or hard to find. It’s like a curtain of silence was layer over that period, because nobody wants, or is not allowed to remember. I could begin to talk about all the people that suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and get no support or the important Khmer rouge leaders that just continued working for the government, claiming that their crimes against humanity were only committed to save their own families. But this is another topic that should just show how little knowledge about important topics is actually accessible to the public.

The only way to change Cambodia, to stop poverty and despair, is to educate the children. Like Nelson Mandela said: “Education is the most powerful weapon we have to change this world”. Education is one of the few things, nobody will ever be able to take away from you. It’s a human right. And all of us should stand up for it. There is no freedom until we are equal and no equality as long as there is not a good education for every child on this earth.

There is a very organized business of people selling children from the countryside to the big city. The families have no money and can’t afford to spend the little they have on their children, so they sell them for amounts of around 50 Dollar to Phnom Penh where they begin to work for organized street gangs. They are being taught basic English skills and sent on the streets to beg. They sell flowers or ribbons or postcards. Sometimes they carry little babies on their arms, asking for milk. Never far away is one of the bosses of the organization who is organizing the trade and collecting the money afterwards. At night time the children just run around free, sleep in abandoned houses and search for food. They always return to work the next day, as this is the only routine they know, the only stability in their lives. The organization “Friends” in Phnom Penh tries to get these children off the street. They offer education, a home and food to them. A save environment in which they can grow up. With all their efforts, they managed to get around two per cent of the children off the streets. The reason is, that the children have their gangs, the influence of their peers, their freedom and months and months of a living where nobody told them what to do and how to act. They are wild and have no behaviour, they take drugs, they are mentally and physically abused many times. They are outcasts from society, distrusting and have never experienced love. Some realities are more cruel than other realities. Seeing a crowd of 10 little boys, running bare feet trough the streets of Phnom Penh at day time might not seem concerning, what happens at night time, is something entirely different.

So what can we really do to stop this? First of all, we need to learn. There can be loads of money and smiling ladies in beautiful costumes that open up school buildings, donate books, games and footballs for the children, what happens is, that dependence is created. Like Daniela Papi said: “Buildings don’t teach children, people do.” Before we decide to drop something in a community that we are unfamiliar with, when we actually want to help the people and give them something lasting that makes an impact, we need to learn. So many organizations come into development countries and send volunteers that stay for a short time, building wells or shelters, taking pictures with the children to post them on facebook and instagram before they leave again to their comfortable life. What happens to the things they leave in the community? The people will use them, until eventually something breaks, books get lost or the football has a hole and looses air. Locals won’t go and repair the things, they might not know how to, or they have their own lives to worry about. They instead wait until help comes again and they get new things donated. This is what happened in Africa. So many years of foreign aid completely destroyed the country, organizations came to bring food and water, donating clothes… all these things didn’t last, instead they took the peoples confidence and dignity away and left them begging for more. In my opinion all these countries that “need so urgently help” from the West were once proud nations, full of impressive culture and wonderful traditions, older than we can ever imagine. These people were happy. The globalization and our image of how people have to live brought so much despair and grief to these countries. What is the situation in Africa today? The people are still poor, but on so many levels their independence and the hope of creating a better state that is more fitting for the challenges of the new century, was taken away by the foreign aid. Just like the UN operation in Phnom Penh 1992, that Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani described as “scandalous and immoral” or to give a more drastic examples, Americas disgusting wars beginning in Vietnam that were so absolutely wrong and mindless, they were destined to fail from the very beginning. We are doing it the wrong way. We forget that the people we want to help, are human just as we are. We should look them in the eye, face to face, realize that we are no better than them. We are equal, all of us. And coming into a new country, a new environment, we have to realize that not WE are the ones that should come and teach. Who are we to say that everything we do is better? It was proved so many times, that the opposite is the case. We have unemployment, health-care, poverty, migration and many more issues that we face. Why don’t we start in our own countries, instead of going somewhere else? We need to give the people the possibility to develop themselves, to have own ideas and found their own projects or even better, social enterprises within their community. Because they know how things work, they know about the culture, the climate, the language and many more things that we as people from the outside have no insight on. We think we know everything when we come into a development country and break into the life of innocent people, destroying their world in giving the begging children money or opening up a school, that gives the government an excuse to prevent changes, as the foreigners will take care of it. That’s not the right way. When we come into a new country we learn, learn from the people instead of telling them that they need to learn from us. There are around 5000 NGOs in Cambodia and I don’t want to say that all of them are bad because some are doing a good job, but yet there are so many that are just giving up, changing the lives of the people in a community, making them dependent on foreigners that are offering all these new and shining things, leaving the people insecure and vulnerable after they left.

I was talking with one of my students the day before. He asked me if I wanted to go back to Germany, because I didn’t like Cambodia. I was astonished and told him that the exact opposite was the case. I loved Cambodia and was very sad that I eventually would have to leave. He looked at me with a sad look and asked: “Don’t you know that Cambodia is poor? Have you looked around? This is not a beautiful country.” I asked him if he thought money was beautiful. He looked at me confused, shaking his head. “There are many people in Germany, that have a lot of money.”, I told him. “But this doesn’t mean that they are happy. Sometimes it is all their money that causes them to be sadder than before. You should never forget, that money can’t buy you happiness.” “But in Germany you have everything, everyone there has a house and warm water and electricity.” “This is all true.”, I told him. “But people that have all these things don’t know, that this is something they should actually be happy about.”

Every one of us who wants to help the children, should ask himself if he is really willing to learn. Only then we can follow Gandhis path and be the change we want to see on the world.

We All Have One Thing In Common: Diversity

This week was wedding week. I got three invitations for weddings in the whole month and two of them were this week. Weddings in Cambodia begin incredibly early; I had to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning to get ready each time (the bride at 3 o’clock) to participate in the fruit walk. I think it was enough to describe the procedure one time, you can read all about it in “And They Lived Happily Ever After?”. The first wedding was Rathanas sisters wedding. As Rathana lives just next to the market, they built up the tents in front of her house and also just at the entrance of the market. Nobody could get in the market anymore and the whole traffic was reorganized. It is just a normal street where they place tables and a stage as if it was actually an event location. The poor selling women that were gutting out their fish at this place had to move somewhere else. Everything is made of a giant load of kitch. The tents are decorated with ribbons in gold and pink and every chair gets a colourful coating. The entrance gates are made of flowers and fruits and inside the house where the ceremonies take place, everything is sparkling because of golden plates, chests and crockery. I was once again the tallest person at the whole ceremony, drawing all the looks at me. The girl walking next to me at fruit walk tried to take selfies with me while we were walking down the road. Everyone who lived there and was not invited came outside their doors and watched the procedure as if we were in fact an amusing parade. This is a thing I also frequently notice in Cambodia. Whenever I go somewhere, the parents are taking their children by the hand and draw them outside the house so they can see me and say “hello” and “how are you”. Garlaine recently told me, that it was really just as if we were a one man parade and they were bringing their children just like we would do in Germany or America to let them see the funnily dressed clowns and dancers that are on the wagons. When we finally arrived at the house and could put down our plates, Kadet came running towards me. Then she took my hand and pulled me towards a chair. I am sure she wanted to lead me out of the crowds and into safe territory, because she always seems to have the urge to make sure I am well and safe. We watched the Apsara dancing and threw the flowers on groom and bride. Basically, all Cambodian weddings are the same and they consist to 80% of waiting till the next part of the wedding will start.

A hundred years ago Cambodian weddings were seven days long. Later they made it 3 days and now it’s only one and a half day. Still too long. When finally the evening part of the wedding begun at four o’clock, I was incredibly tired and hungry. I got placed next to Mach who was also invited. I didn’t realize that I sat on a table with all the important people from Angtasom that Rathans father had invited. He had studied with Mach and so he was greeting him like an old friend. Despite the fact that he had to be enormously busy with greeting all the guests and bringing them to their tables, he managed to step by every twenty minutes to check if we had enough bear. We were the only table that got the fancy ABC-beer that has an extra high percentage of alcohol and is really expensive. I’m not sure if I mentioned that before, but people in Cambodia are anstossen not only one time before they start drining, but every three minutes. Then every raises their glass and screams “Lekailang” and “Chulkamoi” enthusiastically (same as cheers). I tried to drink as slow as possible, but every time I took a sip from my glass, it got filled to the top again. What made it worse was, that I couldn’t eat anything, because on weddings it is especially important to cook a lot of meat and so I was on the best way to get drunk, next to my not exaggeratingly responsible host father. I decided to search for Sreydieb, Sopohl, Sreyleak and Kadet who were all invited to the wedding too. I sat on their table that was prepared with soft drinks and tried to prepare myself for the dancing part. First the couple is cutting the cake and then they light candles, give speeches and throw the flower bucket. Everything is well organized in a way that makes everything as long as possible, from the beginning to the end.

A lot of parents that have their children at the Learning Center were invited and brought them with them. When the dancing part of the wedding begun I had 10 little background dancer, all of them copying my steps. It was a lot of fun and I ignored the fact that probably all 600 guest were watching me by then. We danced around the fruit table and a furious crowd of 7-year olds blocked my way, every time I was planning to sit down after a song. At 10 o’clock Sreydieb pulled me to the side. She said that Kadets father got really sick and that we would go to his house now and visit him. When we arrived, around 30 people were standing around his bed. He was apparently asleep, but maybe he just closed his eyes to not be forced to talk to all the people that had come to see him. Kadet winked enthusiastically and gestured for me to come closer. I sat down on the edge of the bed (a wooden table outside the house) and didn’t really know what was expected of me. Should I say some blessings or take his hand in mine to make evil ghosts vanish? “He speaks French.”, Kadet announced. As he was sleeping this didn’t help me at all. Kadets son climbed up the table and lay his head on his grandfathers belly. On the one hand I admire how close the families in Cambodia are to each other. Close to four generations live in one house and even aunts and uncles are not far down the street. On the contrary in Western countries we simply send elderly people to a retirement home and come from time to time to visit. I admire this about the culture and think that this is more so the way it should be. On the other hand, I believe that it is not doing any patient any good, to have his entire relatives standing around his bed chatting, in the middle of the night. I, myself, felt that I shouldn’t be there, that I was the least person that should correspond with him in French right now. I folded my hands and bended my head down to him, to show my respect. Then I told everyone in the round that I hoped he would be better soon. Serious nods from everywhere. We stayed at the house until after 11 and I had to talk to all of Kadets relatives before I was allowed to go to sleep.

Stacy told me, that she was pretty much over weddings too. Every time she has to sit and listen for hours on no end to people talking in broken microphones with the loudest voice and the noise is even increased through the as well broken loudspeakers. When she attended her last wedding, she was sitting at a table with some elderly women. All of them were mustering her while she tried to eat until one of them said: “Oh Stacy! You have a face like a duck egg!” She didn’t know what to say to that and tried to get away from the table as fast as possible. Later someone told her that this was actually a compliment. It meant that you had an evenly formed face that was pure and smooth like a duck egg.

At the wedding of Siphens cousin, both Stacy and I were invited. I was incredibly glad to have her with me. After the morning part (with a cabaret show of some ancient Khmer folk tale), the hair cutting ceremony and Apsara dancing, we waited for the evening part to begin. One of the houses of Siphens uncle was transformed to a beauty studio. We got in line to wait until it was our turn. I always feel like I am a doll that is dressed and brushed and styled, without having a say in how I actually want to look like. The most important thing is to put tons of glitter on my face and hair. I prepared myself to wait until five different courses that I couldn’t eat were brought to our table. Fortunately I sat on a table with Stacy. We were talking to each other about the daily craziness of Cambodian life and the whole time nobody of the eight other people on our table was talking, everyone was just starring at us wide-eyed and listening to what they couldn’t possibly have understood. I once again had to think about the parade-comparison that Garlaine had drawn. After that we were lighting the sparklers and I tried my best not to stand in the way of anyone who wanted to catch the flower bucket. One time was enough for me. I had to drink a beer with my favourite tuc tuc driver, Vanak, and danced with him and Linda around the fruit table. When it was about time to go home, I was stuffed in the car with 8 other people from my host-family and realized once again, that this was just the way things worked here.

To that point, the beautiful dress that Linda gave to me was completely black at the hem. I decided to bring it to the tailor to make it shorter. I went with Sopheak the next day and we walked though the market. There is one market row, with maybe 20 women, that are doing nothing besides fitting, cutting, sewing, mending, changing and inventing new clothes. When we finally found one women that had time for us, she took a giant scissor out of a basket and cut my dress shorter in about 5 seconds. I was horrified, watching her. It was like sitting at the hairdresser and hoping he would not cut away too much hair. She announced I could pick it up in five days and wept the pieces that once belonged to my dress away with a broomstick. I told myself it was for the better, but it still hurt. I really adore this dress.

I played a game with the children that is called carrot farmer. When I was younger I absolutely adored the game and could play it for ages. You just never want to be the farmer, but being a carrot is wonderful. The children all need to lie down besides one that is the farmer. Then they intertwine their hands and try to hold and while the farmer tries to break the circle e.g. pull the carrots out of the soil.

When I arrived in Cambodia, I brought ‘The Fault in Our Stars’, a book by my favourite author as a present for Sopheak. We read a chapter every week ever since and finally finished it now. It was a struggle and more than once Sopheak was ready to stop reading. I always had to summarize the chapters for her and ask her questions so she would stay interested. After we had managed to read about half of the book we made a lot of progress. Sopheak finally got into the story and really wanted to find out what would happen in the end. It was the first book she ever read in English and considering that she had done a really good job. The next book that we are going to read is ‘The Hunger Games’ and she already finished chapter one.

Apropos reading, I started a reading group with some of the older children now. We are chose to read the original version of Peter Pan. It is a wonderful book. I believe that it should be part of every child’s education to learn about Peter Pan. I already mentioned that I read the simple version of the Peter Pan story with the class that I teach from 5 to 6. Lisa, one of the girls in the class recently came to me and asked me if I believed that Peter Pan really existed. I told her, that I believed in it with all my heart and that she should do the same. Because every time a child stops to believe, one fairy looses her glow and will never be able to fly again. Lisa looked at me with big eyes and then she said: “You know teacher Malin, Peter Pan is my idol.” I smiled, because I had managed to attach her to a story that is dear to me.

There is one swimming pool in Takeo. It belongs to a guesthouse and on our last public holiday I went there with Sokna, Sreyoun, Peareah and Sopheak. It was really funny because all of them wore jeans in the pool and I had to teach them how to swim. It took Sokna 30 minutes before she dared to jump from the 1 meter board. We spent 2 hours in the water, trying to chase each other, finding out who could spend the longest time under water and who was able to make a handstand. I wished for my little, six-year-old sister Fenja to be there. She would have played mermaids with us and given us interesting, newly invented names like “Geile Flosse”. Afterwards we were so hungry, that we all ate three Banh Xeos and a coconut in the little restaurant by the market.

One of the fathers of the children I teach in the kindergarten class studied history in university. He tells me a different story every morning he comes to the school and I am always eager to learn new things. This week he told me the story of Dasom, the founder of our village Angtasom. Dasom was a poor farmer who one day began to sell his coconuts at the place where our market is today. Since then more and more people came and followed his example. The place slowly began to develop and is today not only the working place for most of the people in and around Angtasom, but a meeting place where children play, women get their beauty treatments, man play cards, babies sleep in hammocks, elderlies exchange their gossip and monks go to receive money and food and give their blessings. Everyone loves the story of Dasom, that’s why there is a festival for him every year and a statue near our Bookbridge building, showing him carrying his coconuts.

In Cambodia there is a custom of taking a coin and rolling it so hard over your skin, that it leaves red scars on your body. One might ask why anyone would do this, but Cambodians believe that it makes the bad ghosts that are dwelling in your body when you are sick leave you and search for another host. Sreydieb got a cold last week and when I saw that she had red streams all over her body, I just couldn’t believe it. I asked her how she could be so naive and think that this actually helped to cure a sickness. I could see from her movements, that every inch of her body was aching. “You are not Cambodian, you wouldn’t understand this.”, she replied defensively. “Did your cold go away or are you still sick?”, I asked her. “I already feel better.” she said. I am the last person to believe in healing magic, but maybe it really has something to do with faith. If people know that the same method had healed their ancestors generations ago, they have this trust of being able to heal soon. I didn’t have the intention of convincing her that her old, traditional ways of curing were balderdash, besides the fact that she probably hurt herself even more with it.

Other traditions that you should better not break in Cambodia are for example pointing your foot in the direction of someone or outstretching it, sneezing when you are sitting at a table, leaning against a table or kitchen counter, talking while cooking, showing your knees and shoulders, hugging or much worse kissing someone, looking a monk in the eye, talking in a loud voice, whistling… just to mention a few things. The whistle thing was something I couldn’t understand, until Sreydieb told me it was like inviting thieves to come into your house. Since then I stopped doing it. These customs might sound strange to us in the West, but how strange must they find us and our habits when they had the change to experience our culture! All in all I consider humans simply as a very strange schöpfung, that has its eigenheiten in every country on earth. All we can do is to try to accept the eigenheiten of the others, to live together in a peaceful diversity.

Santa Claus And His Far Away Journeys

Obviously I am going to focus this weeks blog article on Christmas. One might think that it’s barely acknowledged in Cambodia, but the exact opposite is the case. Everyone was so excited about it, I received ‘Merry Christmas’ wishes from my students long before the 24th and in front of the ACLEDA bank were a Christmas tree and a Santa Claus. My host mum observed the guy in the costume and asked: ‘’Why are you so far away from your home in the north? You must have flown too close to the sun, you got quite the tan!’’ She got all the bank employees that were standing nearby to laugh. Stacy and I decided to get our nails painted in green and red and though it seemed to be a very American thing to do, I was ready to welcome everything relate to Christmas in some way. It seemed very strange, that on the other side of the earth, there were people celebrating a festival that I was always looking forward to and now not feeling like being in the Christmas mood at all. My grandma sent me a calendar that I could open everyday and with the time passing, I realized that when the Christmas feeling was not here yet, then I should better grab it by the sleeve and bring it here as fast as possible. We made Christmas stars and a Christmas tree out of paper and I tried to explain the whole idea of Christmas to the children: from the bible story to the fact that the celebration is not so much about opening presents as about opening our hearts. I began to learn some songs with the children and though I would have preferred to sing ‘’Morgen Kinder wirds was geben’’, I settled on ‘’I wish you a merry Christmas’’ and ‘’Jingle Bells’’ for the younger ones and ‘’Santa Claus is Coming to Town’’ and ‘’All I want for Christmas is you.’’ for the older children. This got everyone in the right Christmas mood and soon I heard Christmas songs wherever I went. Especially Jingle Bells, no song is so popular and no song is sung so loud and with such a passion. Standing outside the Learning Center you could think that we are in fact singing some revolutionary song while walking through barricaded streets.

Mony asked me to come to the Saint-Paul Institute where he, Makara, Senath and Daro are studying. The university is run by a Christian missionary and enables poorer students from the countryside to study after they finish Highschool. On this day, the university was having a Christmas celebration and of course I said yes to something christmasy. Mony picked me up from Bookbridge and then we went the 30 minutes to the uni on his motorbike (by the way, I am still continuing my driving lessons). When we drove in the court I felt a hundred eyes following me when we passed by the crowd of students. That’s how it probably feels like to be the popular kid in school. I found it horrible. But I am to a certain extend used to staring now, so I just tried to pretend I wasn’t aware of it. I gratefully greeted Makara, Senath and Daro, that had no intention whatsoever to let me wander around alone. There are also two girls that work for Bookbridge now and help to sort the books in the library for two hours in the morning that I saw standing nearby. I had found a new gang and I was planning to stick with them, no matter how many curious looks I was receiving. There was a buffet that contained nothing but huge amounts of meat and I once again just filled my plate with rice and poured chili sauce over it. Then I had to be introduced to every single teacher of the boys. They all invited me to come and join the lesson, as they have no foreign teacher and they would all be immensely glad if they had the chance to talk to one. I promised I would do my best, but with my working hours I am not sure when I’m actually free. When the evening program was about to start I had to sit down in the crowd alone, as all four of them were going to perform something later. They didn’t exactly explain what it was going to be, but I couldn’t wait to see them on the stage. Sitting alone turned out be no problem though, as the whole event was very entertaining.

First of all I was amused to see the students play the Christmas story on stage with traditional Khmer outfits. Everything was very much exaggerated. When Maria was turned down at the door she had a mental breakdown and the Angel Gabriel looked like a jewelry shop. Of course there was some Apsara dancing in between that also somehow seemed a little bit off, but I would like to acknowledge that they try to make the effort and study the story and actually put it in a play. With all the devices. The next play was in English and it had the title “Life after Highschool”. It was a story about three friends that graduated together and they had different plans on how to spend their future. Two of them were going to study at the Saint-Paul Institute and one was going to study in Phnom Penh. Basically, in the beginning it seemed like the girl that was studying in PP had the brightest future and many opportunities lying ahead of her, while her friends that were just going to a relatively small countryside university had drawn the shorter lot. While she was in PP though, she found a boyfriend (the word boyfriend made the whole audience – besides me, as I was in a state of shock – squeak in consequence of hearing such an inappropriate word. When the “boyfriend” was actually coming to the stage and putting his hand on the arm of the girl, the volume was rising to a level that might have caused me a serious ear damage. I thought about “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that I once watched with my mum, my sister and my friend Aaliyah. The actors were basically never once dressed and lying on top of each other half the time. When they would have seen this play instead of the “Life after Highschool”-Story, they would have been traumatized till the end of their days. Then the girl got pregnant from the boy and he left her for another girl. When the actress asked the crowd what she was to do now, everyone seriously screamed “Die!”. I felt like I was on another planet. The craziest thing was, that the girl actually nodded. “Yes, that would be the best. I will commit suicide now.” I wanted to stand up and scream that this was about the most stupid thing in ever saw being allowed to be shown at an official school event, but I doubted that anyone would have understood me, either acoustically or in any other way. When she was about to jump off a bridge her two friends from Saint-Paul Institute (dressed in perfect white and black school uniform, official Saint-Paul Institute ID’s around their necks and certificates in their hands) were coming to save her life and promised to support her and the baby in the future. The moral was of course not to study in slovenly Phnom Penh, but instead on the countryside, where your free time activities are planting rice instead of hanging out with a boyfriend. Well then. I was relieved when Mony stepped on the stage, holding a microphone in his hand. I totally forgot that they were to perform something and now I put my camera out, ready to film it so I could show the video to everyone later. The girl I was sitting next to, whispered to me:

“Oh, don’t you think he’s beautiful?”. I looked at her confused and finally realized that she was talking about Mony, who was still babbling in Khmer.

“You mean Mony?”

“You know him?!”, she asked excited. I figured she wasn’t here yet when we made our appearance in the court two hours before.

“Well, kind of.”

“Oh his skin is so white and pretty.”

“Erm, what?”

“And he is so good in singing and dancing!”

“Maybe he should go to Cambodia Got Talent…”

“What?”

“Nevermind.”

“I wish I could apply somewhere to become his girlfriend.”

Fortunately the dance began in just that moment and I could try to even my breathing so I wouldn’t have to laugh. I seriously sometimes think that everyone will be titled as beautiful here, as long as their skin is white. Lucky me. The performance was awesome. First they were singing and then they seriously started to dance. Daro had mentioned it some weeks ago and moaned about how he couldn’t remember the steps and didn’t have any talent to dance whatsoever. In my opinion they all did a great job, Mony was dancing in front and Makara, Daro and Senath were copying his steps as background dancers. I wouldn’t have thought they had the guts to actually do that. Soon afterwards the show was over and the chairs were removed. I figured that this was the end of the evening, but it really only began just then. Everyone started to dance (with carefully keeping at least 30 centimeters distance between boys and girls) and I was taught some classic Khmer dance steps. I enjoyed it really, for the first time I forgot that there is a difference between the life of Khmer and Western youths. Not even the modern music that they played seemed any different from what they would play back home.

    

At Christmas itself (and yes, Christmas is one the 24th, not on the 25th!) I was organizing a celebration with my students. We had started planning it two weeks in advance and everyone came literally bouncing to school, with a huge grin on their face and an even more enthusiastic ‘Merry Christmas teacher Malin!’ for me. We began with setting up our buffet where we had fruits, cake and some sweets. Then we sang the Christmas songs that I tough them (again) and began to unwrap our presents. We had put them all on beanbags and because we had played ‘Secret Santa’, everyone had to give their present to the person they had picked from the lucky draw. We took pictures every time one was handed over. I had drawn a 17 year old boy named Dara. He is the type of person I would describe as a Scater Boy, though he obviously has no skateboard. One time when we were practicing for the Cinderella Play, I had written five sentences on the board like ‘That’s so exciting!’ or ‘Please help me!’, that everyone had to recite in the most authentic way. We all stood in a circle and when it was a persons turn they had to step in the middle and start acting. When it was Daras turn he acted the first four sentences quite well what made me smile, but then he came to me, knelt down, took my hand (I was too confused to react) and said: ‘’I love you Malin!’’. While the whole class started laughing I tried to figure out if this was now good because he had been really creative with the way he presented the last sentence or if I should be angry. I decided to do nothing and just say: ‘’Well, thank you Dara. Who’s next?’’. When I found out that I had drawn him and that I had to find a present, I was thinking the longest time about what to get him. I was not sure, so I asked around and got various suggestions from ‘’What about a football?’’ to ‘’Buy him a Beauty-Nail-Set.’’

Because I had told everyone that it would be wonderful to make something by hand, I decided to sew a pillow for him and stuff it with cotton wool. Then I made the wrapping out of newspaper. When I received all the presents from the students, I was quite stunned to see the beautiful packaging. Everyone had made quite the effort for the day. When I asked Dara where his present was, it took him about an eternity to fumble it out of the bag. I was in a shock when I saw it. I had expected him to wrap a chewing gum in a page of his exercise book or something, but not only was it the biggest present of all, on it was also written: ‘’Precious things are very few in this world, that’s the reason there is only one you.’’ I turned it around and saw that it was covered in hearts of all colour and shape. ‘’Who is this present for Dara?’’, I asked him, but he just stood there, looking down on his feet. Then it occurred to me that it was most likely my present, as I hadn’t seen my name before. My luck of course – I had to draw him and he had to draw me. We were the only ones who had to take two pictures together and when I opened the bag, I pulled out a beautiful cup with a little Hello Kitty, dressed in a winter jacket, gloves and scarf, sliding down a mountain. In the cup and everywhere in the bag were all kinds of sweets. I felt a little bit ashamed for my handmade pillow then. After that we had planned to watch Frozen, but the internet was just too slow. I thought about an alternative film and what could cross my mind other than Peter Pan then, really. (I realize that I mention him quite often in my blog articles, but there is no other fictional character, that helps to grow children’s imagination and makes them dream as much.)  We watched the version of 2003 and the whole class was shaking with laughter. We could only finish half the film. It was just in the very moment when Peter says: ‘’To live is such an awfully big adventure.’’

      

On the 25th Stacy came to our house and we made Christmas cookies. Well, we tried to make Christmas cookies. With the lack of ingredients it is quite a hard thing to do. First our dough was too moist and then it suddenly turned into a stone-like texture. As we didn’t want to waste all the dough we just made the first load of cookies anyway and despite the fact that I had the feeling my teethes would fall out, I liked them. This is what happens when there is a lack of cookies in your life. You have no prejudices anymore and eat everything within reach. As Stacy was looking at me confused, as I stuffed the cookie in my mouth, I shot a defensive look at her and said: „Don’t judge a cookie by it’s ugly cover.“ Then we started over again. Something we changed in our recipe made the second load crispy on the outside and fluffily soft on the inside. In other words: just perfect. We made five baking trays and spread cake icing on top. They tasted like heaven. I have to admit that I felt slightly sick after the Christmas dinner. We had a barbecue, sandwiches (with cheese!), soup and apple pie. The thought of leaving any of these delicacies for the dogs, made me eat until I felt like an air balloon that could go to space. Stacy brought her little Christmas tree that she had gotten from Phnom Penh and as her parents had sent her all kinds of Christmas tree decoration the year before, it really looked pretty authentic. All in all it was still a very different, but nice Christmas.

When I came back to Bookbridge the other day, I got the sweetest surprise ever. There were countless students that brought me stuff to eat with a wide grin and the ‚Merry Christmas’ that was finally reasonable. I got vanilla drops, chocolate bars and strawberry chewing gum. It was so nice that the students thought about that, despite the fact that the didn’t celebrate of course, I was grinning the whole day long. And then I skyped with my family for the first time from the Learning Center during working hours and everyone wanted to see them. The highlights were, that my dad was suspected to be my brother and one of the boys I am teaching from three to four was performing a dance in front of the camera.

One thing I can’t forget to mention is Kadets birthday that was on Friday. Sreydieb and me went to the bakery to get her a cake. She was so happy about it, she had tears of joy in her eyes. She called her husband who works as a teacher to come to the Bookbridge and try a piece. He also brought all of Kadets children, that never had a cake before. It was very happy and we all ate the cake together until Sreydieb had the idea to start a cake fight. In the end we were all covered in the green topping and looked like Crumbel Monsters.

      

In the evening Sreydieb slept over at my house and we watched “Frozen” (we get never tired of children’s movies), what Sreydieb absolutely loved. She said the best thing about it was, that Elsa and not Christopher saved Anna in the end, because normally it’s always the guy and that is a really cool change of events.

So now I am excited for New Years Day and what will happen then. One thing is for sure, it will be different.

Sensational Thoughts

The harvesting seasons is coming to an end. The beautiful Cambodia that I grew to love, with it’s green plains as far as the eye can reach, has suddenly turned into a bald wasteland. Comparable to a head that lost it’s youth and full hair with the years, like strands of color, day by day. I luckily know that in the next year the fertility will return like the phoenix out of the ashes. Still I miss the picturesque view that welcomed me on my first day.

In the Learning Centers, both Takeo and Angtasom, I began with educating the students about Health and Environment in little workshops. For example by letting them design a picture of their ideal environment with watercolour. There was no factories, no rubbish by the wayside, no advertisement on the paintings. Just nature in it’s purest form and happy people doing simple work. Then we talked about what we could do to make our planet a better place for humans, but also animals and plants to live on. We collected ideas like using recycled paper for school and a bag made of fabric for going to the market, collecting the rubbish, taking the bicycle and many more things. For the health workshop I brought a paper with a child that had dirty hands, uncombed hair, a running nose and long fingernails. The children should point out what they didn’t like about the picture and then we drew the same child how it should actually look like. Afterwards we discussed why it is important to wash hands, comb the hair etc. It is a beginning to make the children aware of the importance to act in certain ways, that help them to change their own future and appear as role models for others.

On Tuesday I was staying over at Sopheaps house. Sokna, Phearey and Chanthou welcomed me as if I had not seen them for months and we cooked a lovely dinner together. I love how all of them are eating vegetarian food because of Sopheak. We made beans, pineapples and of course morning glory. There really is nothing quite as delicious. Then I had to explain to them what Beyoncés song “If I Were A Boy” was about and then we washed the dishes and clothes together, cleaned the floor and swept the stairs what is part of their daily life routine. After we finished the duty tasks, Sokna taught me how to knit and Sopheak and I were reading some chapters of “The Fault in Our Stars”. Though the four only have a tiny room, no mattrass, more mosquitos than ricecorns and no shower, it is my favorite place in Cambodia.

As Christmas is coming soon, I began to decorate the Learning Center a little bit. I made Christmas stars in four different colours with the children and secured them on the ceiling. Then I brought some of the decoration that my grandmothers sent to me and placed it at every place I could hope to not see it being destroyed. I am actually not allowed to celebrate Christmas to not force the Western culture on the children, but I have no intention to talk about religion in any way, so I guess it is okay. The children are all eager to do Christmas stuff. They ask me teach them songs and show them pictures of snow.

From everything I have heard, Cambodians imagine Germany consists of many castles that are high up on mountains, covered in snow. Somewhere between the mountains are guys playing football and guys drinking beer and then there are cars that drive up and down from one castle to the other. I was recently talking to an Australian couple about German food. They wanted to know what kind of stuff we were traditionally having for a meal and I stated, that first of all, it had to contain loads of meat. I began to count down all the German sorts of sausages that we have: Bratwurst, Thürniger, Nürnberger, Butwurst, Bockwurst, Knackwurst, Lanjäger, Leberwurst, Teewurst, Weißwurst, Gelbwurst… while I saw their faces turn from interested to confused to slightly amazed-disgusted. They wanted to know what kind of stuff I was eating, when basically everything seemed to be made of meat. I tried to explain to them what Knödel were. “It’s like a potato ball, but sometimes it’s also a ball made from bread, you boil it. And sometimes it’s a ball, but the ball is stuffed with meat, for example the Leberknödel or the Speckknödel, so I can’t eat that, too.” After they didn’t seem to get the point of Knödel, I tried to explain to them what a Germknödel was, (a cake ball, with jam on the inside), but finally gave up.

I might have mentioned Grandma. She is over 80 years old and more sporty than anyone I know. She is working from dusk till dawn, never ever stopping. She caries water, brings the cows from one place to the other, cuts the rice, makes fire… it is incredible. And one thing is very good to know before making her acquaintance: you should never, ever mess with her. One time when Salé wouldn’t move from the chair he had comfortably rested himself on for a short nap, she hit him with a tree branch and chased after him when he tried to escape his fate. Another story that Siphen once told, is about a neighbor who came home very drunk at night and tried to enter the house. There was a little bush by the gate, that was growing so that it’s highest branch barely reached the knee of the man. He was convinced that it was not a little bush though, but in fact a tree, so high he could not pass by. What he did in his drunken state of mind was, to rip the tree out by its roots and throw it away to get by. When grandma saw that her bush was torn out of the soil the next morning, she immediately new who the culprit was and went with another tree branch to his house to beat him up. Despite the fact that he insisted it was not him who came the night before and after, when he cried for mercy, grandma didn’t stop punishing him, so furious was she with his behaviour. The conclusion of this story is: never, ever mess with grandma.

My hostaunts mother on the other side, was only ever lying in bed since I arrived in Cambodia. Last week she died and though everyone was expecting it to happen, it was still a great shock to everyone. I mentioned that the belief in ghosts is very strong and widespread in the kingdom, but I was confused that even Siphen announced that it was a very good time for her to die. And with that they don’t mean the season or the month, they mean the time of the day. The grandmother died at 10:15 what seems to be a very good sign for the family and will bring them luck and possible fortune in the future. I didn’t understand it exactly, but it has something to do with the fact, that the whole day is still lying ahead then. It brings misfortune over the family, when a person is dying at night time and even in the late afternoon hours it’s a bad sign. When the celebration for the funeral was, they built a huge tower in front of the house. It is kind of hard to describe, it looks a little bit like a pyramid, the steps are covered with white blankets. On top they place the coffin. Death is grief as much to a Cambodian as to a Westerner. Cambodians as Buddhists do not view death as the end of one’s life but rather as the end of a life cycle. It is a passage from one stage of the cycle to the next. The better the karma is that was collected through the years, the higher the position of the person will be after the reincarnation, up to the Buddha. Many people believe that Buddha is a person that exists right now, spreading his presence over the people on earth that follow his theories. But Buddha is just a state. It means that you are being reincarnated so high that there is nothing above you than the Nirvana. Every Buddhist should try to become a Buddha himself, but it only happens every 2000 years. It is not important if you are man or woman and both ways, the Theravada and the Mahayana Buddhism can lead to the goal.

In Buddhist tradition, it is part of the belief, that rituals have to be performed, because otherwise, the deceased will not be able to move onto the next stage of the cycle: the rebirth. Because of this, many Cambodians would be upset if they are not able to perform correct rituals for their loved ones. In Buddhist rituals, in life and at times of death, a monk always plays and important role. The monk performs blessing ceremonies at births, weddings and times of sickness. It is not unusual that a monk or monks are invited to recite sermon at the bedside of a seriously ill or comatose patient in order to chase away bad spirits and try to help the sick person to recover. The monk is also at the bedside of the dying person in order to prepare him or her for the next life. It is very important, that a monk is present at the time of death, because this is when the soul exits the body but still stays nearby. It is believed that the soul is in a state of confusion and fright after exiting the body. The monk is needed to calm the soul. In Cambodia, when a person dies, the care of the body is undertaken by the family. The body would be brought home, washed, dressed, and placed into a coffin. The body is not to be dissected and organs are not to be removed because it is believed that would affect one’s rebirth. The body is not embalmed. Traditionally, the body is kept in the house for seven days or longer before cremation. Today, it is common that the body is kept for only three days. In my family it was only kept for one day. Monks come to the home and recite sermons every evening by the side of the body. A funeral procession is organized to carry the body to the temple for cremation. The crematorium is usually on or near the temple grounds.

A funeral procession consisting of an achar (priest), Buddhist monks, members of the family, and other mourners accompany the coffin to the temple. The oldest descendent has to shave his head to show his mourning and by wearing white clothing. In the case of my family, Lee (the brother of Linda) had to shave. White is the traditional color of mourning for the death, opposed to black as it is common in Western cultures. After cremation, the Buddhist ritual requires a funeral/remembrance ceremony to be held on the seventh and on the one-hundredth days after death. It can be held at the temple or the home, but usually it is held at the temple. My family did both ceremonies at home. In the end of the remembrance ceremony, there we had a special firework and all the people that came to join had to be provided with food. That’s why the preparation for the day began two days before the celebration. It is believed that cremation allows the soul to part away from the body and to go to hell or heaven in order to wait for reincarnation. After cremation, the ashes are collected, cleaned and usually kept in a stupa in the temple compound. The belief is, that at this place the deceased is close to Buddha and to the monks in whom the soul would be able to be reborn sooner. Some families keep the ashes at home (like my family). Other people have a piece of their beloved one’s bone or tooth gilded as amulets, worn around their necks. This is done in love for the person, or in belief that the parting ancestor will protect them.

We have a huge pond in our garden that is filled with tons of waterlillys. During the time of the Khmer Rouge a bomb landed at the exact same place and tore a giant hole in the ground. Instead of filling it again, they just decided to take advantage of the situaton and create something new. Eric learned swimming in there and from time to time Pou Pon (Siphens brother) is fishing there with his fishing-rod. Last week Siphen and Mach came with four buckets of fish that they got from someone who’s pond is too small and threw them all in the water. I don’t know the exact number, but surely more than fifty fishes. So when I was sitting by the waterside the next day, the sun had already vanished and the stars were reflected by the surface of the water, I saw something bubble. I decided to throw some corns of rice to the spot and suddenly about fifteen catfish appeared and fought for dominance. I couldn’t belief that they had lived in the peaceful pond for all this time and I hadn’t known about it.

On the weekend I went to Kampot, because for once I had to buy some stuff and I also finally wanted to see the little river-side town. It’s just two hours with the bus, so I figured it was worth it. I went in the morning on Saturday and checked in a dorm room of a youth hostel. The first thing I did was race to a kind of café that I read about on the internet. The name is “Epic Arts”-Café and they not only sell brownies there, but also stuff that disabled people are making as crafts. It is a kind of NGO that has the same name as the café and they bring people with diseases and disabilities together and do really cool dance and music classes with them. I talked with a girl who worked there for some time and was really amazed by their concept. Then I borrowed a bycicle and bought spaghetti for Kadets family and peanut butter for me. After I stuffed it in my bag I cycled further outside of town and down to the salt fields. Kampot is known both for it’s pepper and it’s salt. The people that work there have a really hard job, filtering the salt out of the water with shoves that they stick in the soil. It is an incredibly exhausting labor. The filtered salt is brought to a kind of storage room in a wooden hut. Huge amounts of salt are stored in there, waiting to be brought to other places on earth for being processed. I cycled past the huts and was astonished how different the whole landscape was here. The mountains by the waterside were absolutely green, a lot of birds were flying around the peak, dragonflies were humming and beautiful flowers grew everywhere. I was probably on my way since three hours, but I didn’t want to turn back towards Kampot. The countryside was just so stunningly beautiful. Finally I arrived at the foot of a mountain and decided to climb up, because the path on which I was driving had suddenly ended. When I reached the top, I could see the sea under me, the waves crushing at the shore. I breathed in the fresh air and had this crazy feeling of being at the end of the world.

    

When I arrived back in town in the evening, I bough a ticket for a boat tour down the Kampot river. I met two girls from the Netherlandson the little boat and they asked me out about everything that had something to do with Cambodia. Politics, history, religion, culture, tradition… only then I realized how far away I actually was from the people that are travelling the country. I had loads of stories to tell them and so many opinions on things, I had not known anything about four months ago. We watched the sun settle behind the mountains next to the river and the little fisherboats returning home to their houses by the riverside. The two of them asked me to come along for dinner after boat trip and I agreed. The place we found had some music show in the evening and the two man who were singing had obviosuly written their own songs. One was called “Apsara You Beauty – Forever Engraved in Ancient Stone”. We were basically laughing all evening, about the texts and other things and before they left I told them Machs Guava story. Back in the hostel I saw two girls sitting in the court and as I had already seen them when I arrived, I waved at them. They waved back and asked me to come and sit down and once again I had to tell the story about where I come from and what I am doing here. Their names were Meitar and Karin and they were both from Israel. We agreed to go on a trip together the next day and met each other at 8 o’clock at the reception. I persuaded them to come with me to the Epic Arts Café. After we had each a piece of chocolate cake for breakfast we went up a mountain and visited a waterfall. The waterfall was spectacular, around 50 meters high and the stones around were all shaped round by the water. Meitar and I were talking a lot about the history of our countries just as the past our relatives. It was interesting and somehow relieving to talk with her about all the things that happened so many years ago and to learn about actual people behind the statistics and numbers I know from the time around World War II. They were more than astonished to hear that we talked a lot about Israel in history class. I had to be back at the bus at 2:30, but before I left they both told me I could come to Israel any time. It was such a nice encounter, it felt strange to leave them and go back to Angtasom as if nothing had happened. Sitting in the bus where I just caught the last seat, I tried to read the book by Haruki Murakami that I had just started. Besided the fact that I was very much in love the way the story was going, I couldn’t really concentrate. Everyone around me seemed to be asleep and I couldn’t help but sense that a strange scent was in the air. I might have been drawn too much into the story, but when I woke up I saw smoke. My luck – everytime I go somewhere with a bus in Cambodia, something weired happens. We all had to get out of the bus and as I looked around we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Standing by the wayside I watched the bus driver discuss something with a man who just came out of one of the houses nearby. Everyone in the bus looked super exhausted and annoyed about the problem our bus had. From experience I can say that you never know how you will get out of a situation like this. I looked down the road and suddenly started laughing. I was maybe 50 meters away from Sopheaps gas station where I had left my bycicle before I had hopped on the bus to Kampot the other day. I persuaded the bus driver to give me my backpack and walked across the street, followed by the looks of the whole bus load. I said hello to Sopheap, took my bike and drove down the road. I have no idea how long everyone was stuck there or what the hell they thought I was doing, but being back home with a cool shower 20 minutes later was definitely worth it.

      

I found a new game that I absolutely love. It is called “Truth or Lie” and it goes like this: you have to state three sentences about ypourself. One of them is wrong and two are true. The others have to guess which sentence is which. I made an example when we played for the first time, saying:
1. I have three little sisters
2. I love onions
3. My favourite sport is volleyball
As I hate onions this was obviously the lie. The students really liked it and come up with much funnier things than me. One boy who walked in front of the class and said: “I hate football”, “I’m very good at math.”, “I am so in love with my boyfriend.”, what got everyone to laugh hysterically.

As it was Stacys birthday this week, I decided to make a banana cake for her. I got a recipe and changed some of the ingredients. It was a struggle to get them of course. I drove to the next bakery that is on the wayside of national road number 2 and bought flour there. Eggs and bananas I had and then I just took vegetable oil instead of butter. I was a little bit scared to see the outcome, but besides the fact that it looked more like banana bread than cake it was fine. This really motivated me to try out more bakery stuff in the kitchen. I also cooked for the first time at Kadets house and as everyone wanted spaghetti with tomato sauce, I figured that there were not many things that I could easier make and agreed. Back from Kampot it was the first thing I did with the spaghetti. Before I went home with Kadet for lunch I went to the market and bought onions (Yes, I hate onions, but this seems no be a necessary ingredient), garlic and some herbs. And of course tomatoes. Kadets whole family (8 people, it reminded me of the time when I was at Monys house) watched me cooking and followed my every step. I was glad that I had bought so much spaghetti for this occasion, because after I gave everyone their first portion, they all wanted to eat more. It was a struggle to explain to them, that I am not doing a very difficult dish here, but they all thought it was incredible. The leftovers were packed in boxes and given to the Bookbridge staff that didn’t join us for lunch.

I would like to end this blog article with a quote by Oscar Wilde that makes me laugh every time I think of it: ‘I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.’ Though my life could not be compared to Oscars, I hope this weeks article was sensational enough to be enjoyable.

Well Balance Everything You Do – And Eat

Banh Xeo is one of the most traditional Khmer dishes in Southern Cambodia. It is very easy to make as it’s in fact just a crêpe and very, very tasty. You make it out of rice flour and coconut milk. The yellow colour of the crêpe comes through tumeric. In fact it is a much more healthy alternative to the common pancake with sweet milk that most of the restaurants serve for Western tourists. When Sopheak and I decided we wanted to do a cooking workshop, our choice of dish fell on Banh Xeo. It was a crazy act that we went through. The whole classroom was transformed to a cooking studio and around 20 students came to help us. First we chopped vegetable. We needed cucumber, carrots and all sort of herbs. Then we had chilli, peanuts and lime for the sauce in which you dip the Banh Xeo in. Because Sopheak is wonderful and she is the only Khmer person I know that is vegetarian, we made vegetarian Banh Xeo. Normally you put soja bean sprouts and meat inside, when you flap the dough over, but we used beans that tasted a little bit like deliciously fried tofu. We had to use two stoves and everyone took turns with cooking while the rest ate our Banh Xeo experiments that tasted just as good as the ones you can order in the restaurant. Of course they looked a little bit different, but you can find beauty in imperfection. It was a real tohuwabohu, but so much fun I would do it again any time. After we told Sokhan about it he was silent for some seconds, thinking. Then he said: “Well, that is quite a wonderful way to experience your own culture, that is for sure.” After that positive feedback, we were really motivated to do another cooking event soon. But next time it will be quite difficult to top the Banh Xeo.

    

I mentioned this nice Belgian couple that wanted to buy me Hot Belgian Chocolate. They also gave me some stuff for the Learning Center. Pens, paper, glue and all kind of useful things and inter alia a handicraft set. You could make butterfly chains and boxes with motives like flowers and owls with it. All you had to do, is basically sew everything together and stich the pictures on the fabric. Though of course, it’s never that easy in reality. I had maybe a 100 children that wanted to help me and I was occupied with not letting anyone prick a needle in the eye of someone else, while I had the operating instructions in my hand and tried to read them while someone was grabbing my sleeve and screaming, “Cha, Cha, I want the butterfly not the leheheheve!”. I don’t know how I finally managed to finish the whole thing. It took me about three hours and an enormous amount of patience. Another problem was, that stuff just disappeared. When you have a little pearl that you need to sew on a butterfly wing, it is not easy to keep watch on it for that amount of time. In the end it didn’t quite look like on the packing, but it was made with love.

    

I want to be honest. We have loads of problems in the LC and the root of all of them are children that only ever care about one thing: having fun. They don’t think about being loud, they don’t think about running in full speed, they don’t think about dropping their shoes on the spot, climbing up on places they shouldn’t climb up on, leaving books on the floor and bringing sweets in the library. They are too many and we are outnumbered. It is a war not worth fighting. And still, this week I had a plan, a revolutionary idea, a never before heard of strategy… I pinned a poster with the 15 most important LC rules in the entrance area – with pictures. I know, I know, this might not seem as earthshaking as I would like it to be, but I believe that it’s the little things that can cause a change. Maybe not today and not tomorrow, but possibly on the very day that I am going to leave.

There is this game that I love and could play over and over again, because it promises absolute silence for at least ten minutes. It is called “Dead Fish” and all you really need is huge bunch of pillows. You put them on the floor (we use bean bags) and all the children have to lie down and are not allowed to make a move or any sound at all. Breathing is allowed. One child is the fisherman. He is waiting for a good catch and as soon as he sees one of the fishes twitch, he knows that he can throw out the fishing pole and the child is out of the game. I usually say that the students that wins the game is out of homework duty and this works amazing. Eventually children are children and can’t lie around for ages, not making a move. After all, they are not really dead. So it’s a good game to train concentration, feeling of belonging to a group and a form of meditation, that offers the possiblity to think in the middle of a hectic day.

One of the favourite songs of the children, that I am practising with them on Music Monday (I have one lesson in which we are always singing songs) is “Five Little Monkeys”. It goes like this:

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed

One fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor,

And the doctor said

No more monkeys jumping on the bed

Four little monkeys…

One little boy is so fond of the song, every time I see him he starts singing the song and naturally I join in. Everyone who is not in our Music Monday lesson looks at us as if we are quite weired, but if they knew how addicting the song is, they could understand how we feel.

Talking about activities, a very popular game that gets everyone to laugh and scream like their life depends on it is “Simon Says”. I usually play it after a test as a kind of reward thing. I play the Simon and give the children instructions, for example: “Simon says touch your head.”, then everyone has to touch their head. Or I say “Simon says turn around.”, then everyone has to turn around. The tricky thing is, that I am doing it really fast and they are not allowed to make the move when I don’t say “Simon says” beforehand. You are for example not allowed to sit down when I say “sit down.”, because the ‘Simon says’ is missing. It always takes them two seconds to realize when they made a mistake and then the volume in the class goes so high it is incredible, everyone claiming they didn’t make the false move. When everyone who is out sat down on their chairs, the new round starts and grave silence is lying itself on the classroom. It always works and the children absolutely adore it. There are other games that we play frequently. For example flapchart, hangman or 20 questions. In my opinion these games are a way to grow to love a language and become confident with speaking it.

         

This week was once again a public holiday and I spent it with Sreydieb and Buntha. The night before we had a sleepover at Bunthas house and it was not any different from a normal sleepover, besides some tiny little things. First we had a fondue that we ate on the floor. We sat on a huge bast mat and crowded around the pot to get the best pieces. After that we ate a million jackfruits and made each other braids. Sreydieb looked thoughtful in the mirror for some time, then she decided she wanted a haircut. So Buntha brought a scissor from the kitchen and we cut her hair. Just like that, without any tam tam.

I might have forgotten to talk about my own hair cutting experience at the market. It had cost me 5000 riel and the women was busy for one and a half hours. First she combed my hair (what took her maybe ten minutes, she was very careful with that) and then she cut off five centimeters (what took her a minute). Now the question is what she did in the rest of the time. Well, first she put shampoo on my head. And not just one shampoo, but four different kinds and all that without making my hair wet. There was so much foam on me, I couldn’t see my hair and barely my face anymore. She did this for about 30 minutes and then she washed the foam out. Only to put conditioner on my head though. It was a veeeery long process. And then she began to first massage my head and then my shoulders. I felt like being in a first class celebrity beauty saloon and not in a tiny little hut without air conditioning at the market. When she was finally done with the programm, my hair looked like I was a movie star, beautiful, wavy and shiny. I wish I could get the same thing for just one euro in Germany.

So after we cut Sreydiebs hair, we climbed up the stairs to the second floor, where there is a ladder that leads to the rooftop. Buntha lives in the middle of Angtasom where there are actual houses with several stories and from the top of her house you can see over the whole market to the Learning Center and the main road. We took the mattress from her sleeping room and somehow managed to push it through the opening. I can’t even describe how wonderful this place is. The rooftop is maybe as big as my old room and when you look at the sky, you can see millions of stars and the moon as a round ball, shining brighter than I ever saw him before. We brought every single pillow we could find to the rooftop and build a pillow castle around the mattress. Then we secured a moskito net over the mattress. It was just like sleeping in a four poster bed, that are known from stories like “the Princess and the Pea”. I felt like I never slept at a place so cozy before, everything around me was cuddly and soft and at the same time I felt like I was on top of the world and could touch the stars above me. We watched the Disney Peter Pan movie and talked for a little while afterwards. I just couldn’t fall asleep and while I listened to the sound of Sreydiebs and Bunthas breathing right and left of me, I imagined flying to the sky, taking the second star to the right and fly on straight on ’til morning. It didn’t seem unrealistic to me at that point. And that was what I dreamed of.

The next morning we planned to visit Sreydiebs mother on the countryside. The problem was that we didn’t get far because Bunthas neighbor knocked at the door and asked us to sell her chickens at the market, because she was busy with some family affair. Great. I always dreamed of selling chicken at a market in Cambodia. The chicken was already cooked by the way. So we walked to the market, chicken under our wing and settled down at the market stall. It was of course just a low wooden table where we sat down next to women selling vegetable and spices. When you buy something at the market in Cambodia, you have to be aware of the fact, that the feet of the women are being comfortably stretched out and touching the products that are being sold. I tried to get away from the chicken and was basically sitting on a bunch of morning glory. Next to me was a hammock with a little baby sleeping in it and the mother was giving it little shoves. It felt claustrophobic. Luckily cooked chicken is very popular and after half an hour we got rid of all the poor individuals that were soon to be part of a family lunch. I asked myself if I maybe should have refused to be part of the chicken seller community or made a sign with some animal right protest quote holding it in customers faces, but I am really just trying to integrate myself. Being a market seller, if only for half an hour, might be a very good step in the right direction.

We finally headed of to Sreydiebs birthplace to visit her mum. I will not mention that Sreydieb lost her cap maybe five times along the way and we had to stop to get it back. I knew before that Sreydiebs family was poor. I didn’t know that they were indigently destitute. My host family is maybe one of the wealthiest in Angtasom and surrounding, simply because they deal a lot with foreigners and my host mum has 8 different jobs that I don’t really know how she manages. And of course they live on the countryside and there are many, many poor families that have barely anything, but they still have access to electricity and even wifi. Well, after we left the main road, we drove for maybe an hour along ricefields and ricefields and rice fields that looked all the same. The landscape didn’t change much at all, the only thing that told me we were going farther and farther away from civilization was the fact, that there were less houses and each of them looked more abandoned than the one before. For a long time, we didn’t see anything besides fields and I just couldn’t believe that Sreydieb grew up there. She might have never seen a car in her childhood, never experienced all the thousand of things that we have and never think about. Once I had a conversation about housekeeping technology.

S: Malin, is it true that you have a machines to make the vegetable very small in Germany? So you don’t have to cut it, you just let the machine make it very tiny and it goes really fast?

M: Well, yes. That is called a mixer. You can make tomato sauce with it or a fruit shake…

S: That is amazing! And what about the machine that is cleaning the dishes? Do you have that?

M: Yeah, the dishwasher. Most families have that.

S: But how can it work? When this machines is washing the dishes, how does it know what to wash first and why does it not break anything?

M: It all works with water pressure, I can’t exactly describe how, but it cleans all the dishes at the same time.

S: I wish I had something like that. Can you see how it works?

M: No, usually not. The door is closed. You put the dirty dishes in, wait a little over an hour and then put the clean dishes out.

S: I wish I could see that. And what about a machine that makes the water warm? You sometimes shower with hot water, right?

M: Erm… usually, yes. You can choose if warm or cold water should come out of the faucet.

S: Life must be so easy in Germany, you don’t have to do anything when you come home from work. What other machines do you have?

M: Well we have the washmachine to wash the clothes, we have a vacuum cleaner to soak up the dirt on the floor, we have a machine to dry the hair and a machine to help us brush the teeth…

S: What?! You have a machine to help you brush the teeth? That can’t be true!

M: Oh yes, my dad has one and he always brushes his teeth with it. You can choose what kind of movements the electric toothbrush should make and how fast it should move and stuff like that.

S: Oh I can’t believe it! Poor Cambodia!

I had to think a lot about this conversation and when we stopped in front of Sreydiebs house in the middle of nowhere, I felt like the whole Western world and all the superficial things that make out our daily life, are nothing than a layer that makes us feel better than people that don’t have these material goods, despite the fact that we never did anything to earn them and the only result is that we are getting too spoilt and take everything for granted. Of course, it sometimes sucks to shower with ice cold water, but it makes you feel alive and catapults you out of your comfort zone and into the real life where things can hurt. Sreydiebs house was a shed, comparable to the pictures of Indian slums. It had nothing to do with that idyllic image of a wooden, one story, coloured house in the middle of the ricefields. All I could see was a hammock to sleep in and a pig stall next to the shed that was made of some wooden panels and corrugated iron. Her mom was the most lovely person I ever met. With her are living the four children of Sreydiebs sister that can’t stay with her, as she is working in the factory all day long. Sreydiebs mother hugged me and Buntha a thousand times and when it became apparent that she didn’t have any food that she could offer us (I didn’t really want her to slaughter her pig), she sent the three of us off to go coconut harvesting. We had a very long stick and when I say very long, I mean very long. At the top was a scythe and with that frightening weapon carried under our arms, we set off to the forest. Sreydieb looked judgmental to the palmtreetops and soon found a cocnut that was right. We hovered the scythe up and placed it above the branch on which the coconut was growing on the tree. Buntha was just as lost as I was and it took us ages to finally cut the fruit. With a loud splash it landed on the ground. I always have to think of the statistic that says more people die because they are hit by falling coconuts than shark attacks. When Sopheap had her accident and couldn’t walk anymore, she had to drink a coconut every day. It is so healthy and the really fresh ones taste like they are effervesce. Besides all the benefits for the body the fruit can be used for many more things. People make jewelry, plant pots and coconut oil for hair and skin out of it… The best thing about the big green coconuts is the jelly on the inside of the shell because it tastes just like pudding. I really love coconuts. We harvested around six and took them back to the house where we had a coconut party.

      

At the time of the French colonalization every child in Cambodia had to learn French in school. The educational system had a very high standard and the culture flourished. This is why many old people can speak French. Even Sreydiebs mother learned some basics in the village school. She wanted to say something to me in French and repeated a sentence many times, but the accents was so strange, I just couldn’t grasp it. Only when she said it in Khmer and repeated it in French, I understood what she meant. “Je t’aime – Knyom srolaing neak – I love you.”, then she smiled happily at me because I finally got it. She really was like an older version of Sreydieb. She hugged me again when we said goodbye and wished me all the best. It is incredible to see how Sreydieb could come from this little village in the middle of nowhere, so far as to work for an international NGO and being about to finish her bachelor in education at university. I might have talked about meeting her sister and the conditions she lives in before, it is just incredible to see the completely different ways in which their lives have developed. Sometimes Sreydieb seems to be so fragile, much alone in the world, with nobody to support her, but in fact she is stronger than most people I know. For example when she takes all the money she can spare and gives it to her mother.

On the way back we stopped at the house of Sreydiebs aunt. She lived closer to Angtasom, about half an hour from her mother. Along the dirtroad, leading from the house of my host family to the main road, everyone is in some way related. Families tend to live close to each other and spend every second of their free time together. This aunt of Sreydieb was a tailor and she was just about to finish a wedding outfit. It was not like the one that I wore, she was busy sewing little glittery pailettes on the fabric in all kind of stunningly beautiful patterns. We just sat there and watched her work for a while. She let flowers and stars emerge just by moving the needle faster than the eye could follow over the silk. When I wanted to know how long it would take her to finish the shirt, Sreydieb said maybe about a week. It was that kind of difficult craft work, that I admire Cambodian women so much for possessing the skill of. They can do everything. And this women didn’t even have a plan, she made up new patterns while working. I had to think how long we were occupied with our sewing set in the Learning Center. Soon the whole family was crowded around us and we talked with everyone, played with the children and finally ate an early dinner there before we returned home.

  

I would like to end this blog article with a story that my hostdad Mach loves to tell. He is quite the joker and if he wants he can get a whole table to laugh. Maybe I mentioned that he, as the born entertainer, climbed the stage on the wedding and performed a few songs. He always tells this story when he is eating guava. He takes some bites before he exclaims: “Oh, very juicy!” and everyone starts laughing. The thing is, that there is always one person that doesn’t get the joke, so Mach starts to prepare for telling the story. It goes like this: a young monk, who is not used to go to sleep without dinner yet, is sneaking out of the monk sleeping compund to climb a guava tree and secretly eat some fruits. The same idea occurred to an older nun that is hungry herself and when she arrives at the tree, the monk is already sitting in the tree to grab the best fruits from the top branches. The nun of course, with a bad eye sight caused by her high age, tries to grab a fruit that grows lower, feeling the branches for a delicious guava. To understand the story, one has to know that monks don’t wear any underwear. So when the nun is searching for the fruit, she finally grasps something that feels just like a guava, but is of course something entirely different. The monk in the meantime is not allowed to make a sound, because the head monk would punish him if he found out that he is acting against the rules. So the nun is pulling what she thinks is a guava and it is very soft and she really wants to eat it, but it just won’t come off the tree. The monk sits in silence and waits for her to grab another fruit instead, but the nun wants that exact guava because it feels so ripe and so she just won’t stop pulling. Suddenly she feels a warm liquid running over her hands and exclaims: “Oh! Very juicy!”. Of course my host dad can tell the story in a much funnier way, but this is basically the content. So when he has the guava in his mouth, he always has this mischievous grin on his face, looks in the round and says: “Oh, very juicy!”