This week my roommates decided that they wanted some more company without asking me for permission and suddenly I had not only mice and spiders, but also a yellowish frog accompanying me. I guess I mentioned the day when I found one of the mice dead when I wanted to take a shower, what was the most horrible moment in my life. As I would never kill an animal, I tried to build up a friendship with the pregnant spider in my room, that basically carried her babies in a giant white pillow under her belly. She greeted me in the morning and said goodnight to me in the evening. Stacy is really scared of spiders and after I told her that I don’t sleep with a mosquito net, she looked like she was about to faint. Well this week I was casually telling Linda, Siphens niece that is going to marry, that I had a giant spider in my room and she frowned and asked me if I knew that they can bite and insert the spider babies in the skin. As much as I wanted the mommy spider to live in peace and carry out her babies, I didn’t want to be part of it. Linda went into my room and killed it with a broomstick. It took her five stabs until she succeeded, every time I heard a loud “bang” as I waited outside because I couldn’t watch her doing it. Now to the frog, he was suddenly sitting on my window frame and the camouflage was so well done, that I first didn’t realize that it was an animal. I turned around and walked out of my room again. It’s no use to worry about the fact, that I don’t know how all these animals can get inside.When I came back the frog was gone, but there was a new spider on the ceiling. I welcomed her, at least she wasn’t pregnant. (Bugs are being hosted free of charge by the way.)
When I am already talking about animals, I could as well continue with that topic. My host family has a dog called Salé, who is one year old and completely hyperactive. He is always running around, chasing chicken and barking at strangers that pass by. Sometimes it can be really annoying because everyone is busy screaming ”Salé! Salé! No Salé! Out Salé!” all day long, but he is also warmly loved by the whole family so nobody is really serious when he’s being scolded. In fact, the family life turns around this dog and his huge dog eyes, that make him get an extra portion of food on a regular basis. The other two dogs, Tino and Lucky are probably jealous, but that’s how life works. The younger ones are taking your place. I must say, that I appreciate it that Tino keeps guard in front of my door every night. Despite the fact that he is the oldest dog and I never ever heard him barking.
I’ve been told many times, that there are evidently many snakes in the rice fields around, but all I ever see are crabs. Yesterday I came home from school with my bike and all of sudden passed two snakes. One of them was flat like a pancake, because she dared to cross the street. The other one was really small but when I was on her height, she suddenly stuck her head in the air and hissed at me. I got a tiny shock and drove a bow to evade rolling over it, what ended in me driving straight into the rice field nearby.
Every morning the market is as busy as an Asian market should be. Sellers are presenting pig heads, cow intestines and frog legs. In little boxes are around a hundred baby chicks that are peeping because they want to get a look over the edge. Baby pigs are being transported in tiny cages, women are standing around, discussing which one to buy. One of the women is always grabbing a piglet by the foot and pulling it out of the cage. Upside down it is hanging in the air squeaking while the customers are trying to talk over the sound, negotiating about the price. Then there are the motorbikes that are hanged with gooses and chickens so that there is barely enough time for the driver to sit. The birds look so miserable what should not surprise, as they can barely breath and have to wait in the hot sun until someone has mercy and ends their life. One time I saw one of these motorbikes fall to the side, so that the whole load was squeezed under the weight of the engine. I just couldn’t look and the desperate sounds of the tangled creatures were ringing in my ear. Finally someone put the motorbike up again. In one of the smaller market streets, women sell fish. Most of them are still alive, the others are halfed and lie on low stalls to dry in the sun. There are flies everywhere and the smell is incredible. Sometimes it happens that one of the fishes is jumping out of it’s bowl, but all the sellers do is pick them up from the ground and put them back in the water.
Everything you can buy at the market has just recently been freshly made. And everything is done by the females. I once saw a picture of a Khmer women with 8 arms, that should symbolize all the things she has to do day by day. For example the housework, the farming, the selling of the products on the market, the raising of the children, the dealing with the money and many more things. Men just simply like to lie in hammocks and play cards with a fresh Angkor beer next to them. I mentioned that I love the sweets that are packed in banana leaves, but there are so many more incredible things that are made of the simplest things and are even healthy. Beans with coconut milk, sweet corn with brown sugar, rice cake… You have to be a Khmer housewife to know when and where exactly in this chaos, what is sold. And then the negotiating begins, nothing can be bought without talking about the price for at least three minutes.
Then there are the tailors. They have fabric in all different qualities and colors and make dresses that look like out of fairy tale movies. Because the wedding will be soon, I went with Stacy to the tailor to see the dress she had ordered there. It’s long, cut open in the front, with pailettes and pearls on the sleeves and a v-neck at the back, enclosed with glass buttons. All she did was to point on a picture of a fashion magazine and the tailor made the dress for her. I am so excited for the wedding, I can’t even describe it. Apparently we will wake up in the early morning to get dressed up, get our hair and get our make-up done (also on the market, obviously). There will be 600 guests coming and this is a very small wedding for Cambodia.
A plant that is very expensive, healthy and can be rarely found on the market is moringa. My hostfamily drinks every evening morninga tea, because they grow it in their garden, like they do with nearly every herb and spice that can be grown. Moringa is a super food that has 7 times the vitamin c of oranges, 4 tims the vitamin a of carrots, 4 times the calcium of milk, 3 times the potassium of bananas and 2 times the protein of yogurt. My host mum tries to give us a lot from it because it is so good.
This week in school I was drawing pictures of four children on the board to talk about different kind of clothes. One of the girls I drew with curly hair and suddenly everyone started screaming. I was really surprised and slightly confused, but then one boy said: “She has hair like a ghost!”. Ghosts are a pretty huge thing in Cambodia. Every big religious celebration has something to do with the ghosts of the ancestors coming back to earth, every second Khmer legend or myth is about ghosts and everyone is telling spooky stories of obsessed people and abnormal occurances. As soon as it gets dark everyone is talking about the fact that they could meet a ghost on the way back and when I told Sopheak her hair was nice, she said she soon would have to cut it, to not look like a ghost. There are ghosts in every important buliding and offertories where the sacrifices can be placed. Ghosts can basically be everywhere, I wonder why I never saw one. When I tried to tell the class that people in Southafrica all have curly hair like that, nobody would be believe me. I had to bring a picture the next day.
I have a really hard time remembering the names of the children at Bookbridge. I maybe know around 40, but considering the number of children that actually go there, it is not a lot. The thing is, that a lot of the names sound really smiliar and there are simply too many. Sapol, our cleaning women has three children that she all sends to Bookbridge. And to get an extra income she sells sweets in the court in front of the building every afternoon. That is bad because of two reasons: the children get bad teeth and other health problems and the rubbish of the packages is everywhere. Sapol herself is one of the nicest people on earth, I like her so much, she’s simply endearing and her children are very well behaved. You can sense that the family has not a lot of money and so I don’t really know what to do about that. I don’t want that she looses her income, but the situation is certainly not the best.
When I go with Sreydieb somewhere, we go by bike. That’s because we are poor and don’t have a motorbike. She sits in the back while I drive through the muddy lanes. It’s very funny, because everyone stops to stare with us with wide eyes. It seems simply impossible that a foreigner would drive a Khmer girl around, but as Sreydiebs driving skills cannot be trusted, I grab the Lenker myself. Any place I go, where people don’t know me, I can hear everyone from afar screaming “Barang! Barang!” what basically means foreigner. When I love and say “Soksabei Dtee?”, what means how’s it going, everyone changes to “Barang nijiey Khmai!”, what means, the foreigner is talking Khmer. Sreydieb always starts laughing like she’s mad and was about to fall of the bicycle.
Sometimes I feel like even my daily life here, can never be normal, as hard as I try. But maybe it’s good that way, I certainly never get bored here.
captivatingcambodia 