On Saturday I got a shopping list from Ree in Khmer and trotted off to the market. After successfully recognising most of the things on the list and purchasing them I carried it all back to cook with Ree. Surprisingly no stall in the market had any limes (limes are used in loads of dishes and are always readily available, hence the surprise) but after wandering around for a bit saying ‘Where are all the limes? Don’t have limes!‘ in my best Khmer, someone took pity on me and found a yellowish old looking lime for me to take home! Sometimes it really helps to be a barang! Well, I couldn’t go back without one!
My search for a lime also helped distract me from the fact that I was carrying a live fish home in a small plastic bag. I’m not sure exactly at what point the fish lost consciousness but it may’ve been while it was being descaled. Or perhaps pain finally overwhelmed the fish’s small brain when a huge cleaver was used to slice open its stomach and force out its guts and egg sacks! Tasted good though!
The rest of Saturday afternoon was spent sat outside the shop front at the base of the guesthouse where I live. I caught up with world news reading my Guardian Weekly, solved the Sudoku and crosswords while watching my small world go by. It was bliss! As soon as my colleagues discovered I was in Phnom Srok for the weekend I got invited to the village ‘pub’ to drink beer. These opportunities are simply not to be missed. No, I’m not an alcoholic (yet), I mean that it is at these times I get to practise my Khmer, as I am without a translator at weekends, and I actually find out heaps more interesting things than during a normal day’s work. My deputy director is very good (and very patient) at talking to me in Khmer at a snail’s pace so I can understand him and there are always a high school teacher or two around wanting to practise their English. We ended up having a very bilingual conversation with me acting as a translator between teachers talking English and my Khmer-speaking colleagues. I have also prepared them all for the upcoming visit from my bong-srei (big sister!) although they are having difficulty pronouncing ‘Ruth’....
I learnt that there are changes on the horizon which may affect me and my work at the DOE. I discovered interesting political stuff which made me incredibly thankful that I was from England. Imagine having to buy your job? Or having to pay in order to get a promotion? Imagine being in fear of losing your job if your employers ever found out your political stance? Imagine being bought off because of your position and support for the opposition party or having bogus charges brought against you? Imagine how frustrating it must be to really want to help see your own country develop but at every turn you are faced by obstacles put there by your own government! Unbelievable!! And there’s a load more where that came from.
On Sunday I found Phnom Srok’s one and only Christian Church. I was late to the service (nothing new there!) and hoping to slip in the back of the 20-something congregation but no such luck. It is pretty impossible to do anything surreptitiously, much to my disappointment at times like these! So, seated at the front, I listened to the remainder of the service and afterwards was asked to stay and talk with the minister. Happy to oblige, I pulled up a chair and in a mixture of Khmer and English he asked me questions about my friends and family in the UK. After about three sentences it became starkly obvious that far from being interested in my spiritual welfare, he was much more interested in the fact that I had white skin and that by default probably had loads of money, or at least friends and family with loads of money! To cut a long, disappointing story short, he wanted to buy land for the church and a church building. Sometimes it sucks being a barang! I let him down as gently as I could and then headed to the lake for Sunday morning bacon ‘n’ eggs...
The following week finished very positively with an official visit from VSO staff from the Programme Office in Phnom Penh trekking up to Phnom Srok to see little old me!. The visit is supposed to take place 3 months into placement in order to review how things are going and check that I’m still sane. (I managed to hide the nervous twitch I’ve developed and I don’t think they noticed the cardboard cut-out characters that have moved into my spare room - sometimes I just need someone to talk to!). Prior to the visit, I reviewed my placement objectives with the DOE staff (after we found out what they were!) which turned out to be a really useful activity. The PO staff seemed quite impressed with how things were going in Phnom Srok, how relationships have developed, how I’m coping in a relatively rural and remote district and what has happened so far. It was quite a relief to hear I was on the right tracks as sometimes it’s hard to see what I’m doing here! I still don’t think I could clearly explain it to anyone!
I also recently met some of my blog readers! I bumped into Perry and Sarah from the UK at the Programme Office in Phnom Penh and after they found out I was Anna, I was quizzed about how I was feeling now, what happened to the dogs and whether I had found a new translator or not! It was so weird to be known so well by complete strangers! Lovely to know that they cared and were reading with such interest (thanks guys!) and I hope that meeting me hasn’t shattered your expectations! Anyway, for anyone else who is interested... yes, I am feeling fabulous again. I have accepted this is life for the next little while and as well as making some kind of difference for the better in this country, I’m going to try and enjoy every opportunity that comes my way!... The 5 puppies have become 3 much bigger puppies (2 were given away to families in Sisaphon) and are well on their way to becoming the same as the rest of the neighbourhood canines – sleepy or playful during the day and aggressive, hungry rulers of the streets at night. The mother dog is a very sorry looking bag of bones though... and yes, I have a new translator, Soroth, who started work this month. He has plenty of experience of working with NGOs in his home province of Oddor Meanchey and his English is very very good!
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