I am planning a project that I know will benefit everyone in Cambodia in the longrun, especially for ear health problems. I have noticed that Khmer people have a deep love for speakers. And not just little speakers. Big-DJ-style-at-the-club-huge-party speakers. Sure, they may be living in a tiny wooden house on stilts with no plumbing, holes in the walls, no screens on windows, etc, but you can be sure that they have a top-of-the line speaker.
The most common use of the speakers is Karaoke. As long as the karaoke-ers are not in my house, I’m okay with this. I actually enjoy running or biking past houses and hearing terrible terrible singing. I was exceptionally surprised and pleased to see that even houses where the entire downstairs is flooded, people are still upstairs karaoke-ing. Good for them. Just as a general rule of thumb though- I think you should turn it down. There is no reason for it to be so loud.
Then there are religious reasons that they use the speakers. Like I said in a previous post, even the WATS have speakers, and they use them to call the villagers out of their beds at four AM to come feed the ghosts during Pchum Ben. They also sometimes do prayers and chants over the speakers at the Wat or in someone’s house. If a person is sick, they will call on the monks to come pray with them. And that will all be sounded over the speakers so EVERYONE can know.
Similarly, speakers are used for weddings and funerals. Last week there was a wedding across the street from my house. Khmer traditional music started playing crazy loud over the speakers at 5AM. You know it’s crazy when it wakes me up WITH my earplugs. The speakers played all. day. long. Sometime after lunch I was trying to watch a movie on my laptop in the farthest corner of my property, and I devised a plan. As my first secondary project, I am going to confiscate all speakers in Cambodia. From now on you must have a license to use them. Of course, I’m kidding. But I fantasized about it for a while. In all honesty, they have no idea how they are destroying their ears. And I’m a musician! My ears are my job! Sometimes around 9PM I got a little more light-hearted about it because they started playing some American music. Apple-bottom jeans… boots with the furrr… I even managed to fall asleep before the wedding ended.
You might have seen on the news that there has been some bad flooding in southern Asia. In case you were teeth-chattering and knee-quaking worried about me, I’m fine. But yes, there is some bad flooding throughout the country. My house is okay-just a little mud. My school has some flooded areas, and my market is a little hard to get around. But there are some houses that have it pretty bad around me. There are houses where people are using boats to get around. Children are swimming in the downstairs of their house. I don’t know much about rice fields, but I’m pretty sure some of these rice fields are destroyed. After seeing how hard people work in the fields, this is devastating. The provincial city, which is 15 kilo away from my house, is settled alongside a lake. The lake is super high. It’s lapping over the concrete that is supposed to hold it in. It has rained quite a bit, but I think most of this water is spilling down from the north. Of course this causes more than just convenience problems. There are plenty of health risks with all this flooding, and plenty of economic risks because of ruined crops.
Next month is a big national holiday called water festival. For water festival, people from all over the country go to Phnom Penh to watch boat races. I’ve read some newspaper articles that said water festival is cancelled this year because the flooding damage needs to be paid for. It’s really unfortunate. Kinda like in Rudolph when Santa cancelled Christmas because he couldn’t see through the snow. I’m sorry, now is not the time for silly metaphors.
As for me, I’m doing alright. I’m teaching quite a bit- already more than I’m supposed to. Every teacher wants me to teach with them and every student wants me to teach them. It’s really really hard to say no. I get questions like “Why do you teach class 12E and not 12F? You could just come for an hour every week. You’re free during that hour anyway!” Or like “Why do I always see you with the same 3 teachers? When will you teach with me? I told my students that you would teach them.”
Being in a brand new Peace Corps site is a really exciting opportunity, but it definitely has its challenges. I’m having a really hard time explaining that I don’t work for only the school I work for the whole community and for Peace Corps. My work goes beyond the hours I spend at school. Also it’s very hard for me sometimes to not be taken advantage of. I have a co-teacher who keeps handing me the marker and then telling me something uber important that he has to do, and then leaving for a few hours. And I’m stuck teaching his class, which is so not my job. It’s a shame cuz I really like this co-teacher too. I’ve talked to him about it a bit, but it’s not entirely getting through. I’ll just keep trying. Patience is everything I think.
I am brainstorming a number of ideas for secondary projects that I am pretty excited about. The tricky part is finding a time where I can get help and participation from people. Students and teachers claim to be busy 12 hours a day. Maybe some are.. but I gotta really get to the bottom of this.
My family is wonderful. They do way more for me than what is in the invisible contract. At first I was a little disappointed because I was with a young couple with no children, instead of a large family where I am smack-dab in the middle like my training host family. But actually, I think this might have been exactly what I needed. I LOVED being a member of my training host family, but I was one of the kids. Here, I am treated a little more like an adult. The people I live with are my brothers and sisters. And I think this is essential in establishing myself in the community- especially because some of my students are only a year or 2 younger than me. It will be different, but it will be good.
1. and 2. Loveable Leeny.
3. Haha, this is a terrible picture of three members from my training host family. I think I love it though because I can picture them just looking at the camera in confusion and not understanding that a picture is being taken and what it would look like.
4. There is no such thing as privacy when you are skyping to America. At least not in my training family.
5. and 6. The adorable puppy! which may or may not be named Diana. It has not yet been confirmed.
No comments:
Post a Comment