When You're Yey, You're Yey

A yey, in her most simple form, is a grandmother.
But yey really is a different word from grandma. Yey is much more specific to qualities and personality traits.

Here are a couple of examples. One particular yey might not have all of these traits, but you can bet that she will have most of them.

1. Yeys are old. Really old. And if they're not that old, they LOOK really old.
2. Yeys have really short hair, or shaved heads
3. Yeys have leathery, wrinkly, sunken in skin
4. Yeys have no teeth
5. Yeys are constantly nyaming on some betel nuts and spitting, thus making it look like they are bleeding from the mouth.
6. Yeys are stronger than they look
7. Yeys have spent the entirety of their lives perfecting the Khmer squat, and can do it for hours every day.
8. Yeys don't need mattresses. They sleep on hard wood.
9. Yeys say whatever they want, whenever they want, and there's nothing you can do about it.
10. Yeys don't have to get any dressier than just a sarong. Also, yeys don't have to worry too much about covering their breasts.
11. Yeys have every right to smack around the grandchildren
12. Yeys don't need to follow any rules of personal space.
13. Yeys hit people that they like. If you are well-liked by a yey, expect smacks on your arms, knee, and buttocks very often.
14. Yey's will judge you for being older than 21 and both husbandless and childless.
15. Yeys are, in the most literal sense, survivors. They are all real survivors of a horrible genocide, and very often yeys are the glue that have kept families together and growing in the years after the end of the genocide.

More pictures from a typical bike ride 15k into Prey Veng town

Buses fly by every day bringing people between Ho Chi Min and Phnom Penh

The Khmer church supported by Korean Missionaries

See the water buffalo up there?

Hay stacks

The biggest brothel in town

This house collects garbage. I don't get it. But it always kills me to see the children playing around in it.

What you see when you arrive in Prey Veng town

The town

The shop with the overhang is where I eat almost every time I go to Prey Veng. Peace Corps volunteers call it the Sandwich Shop because they sell duck egg and tomato sandwiches.