Teaching While Being Taught

Tuesday morning started abruptly with the sound of a rooster directly behind our bathroom windows crowing at about 6:00 am. It was clear that attempting to sleep through the sound would be of no use and since the night before we went to bed around 9:00, which was the earlier we had yet on the trip, so we woke up. Outside, I heard Siphen calling my name. I went out, and she asked if we were going to accompany them to the school where she teaches today, as they were leaving in a few hours. “Certainly.” So we all began rushing to get ready.

The guest houses here were all built by the family that lives here. The house that we are living in is a somewhat typical Khmer style building, though just a bedroom, and the bathroom. The bathroom, is a single tile room a little larger than a decent sized shower stall will the toilet, the sink, and the shower sharing the same room with a drain in the floor. The “shower” was a hand held sprayer hanging on the wall and a valve with an option to use the sprayer or a knee-high spout. There was also a bucket and a pan available which Natalie realized later were meant for filling the bucket, and using the pan to rinse. Natalie quickly noted that there appeared to be only one option for temperature: On.

While I was putting my contacts in, she went outside and realized, that that was of course because the shower was fed by a roughly 100 gallon barrel mounted about 10 feet of the ground to which all the downspouts on the roof led.

 

Rambutan



After we were all freshened up, we headed over to the communal dining area (outdoors under a grass thatched roof in the center of the residential section of the property. And there was a huge breakfast spread in front of us. Toast with mango jam (made from the mangos on the property. Niño bananas, a pancake shaped thing made from scrambled eggs and spices,, and some exotic fruits called rambutans and mangosteens…They were they super sweet and really yummy.



After breakfast, the four of us, Siphen, and Rein, (a 27 year old girl from Iceland also staying at the homestay) jumped in a CRV and headed for the school. Four of us in the backseat (Kalyssa on my lap) and Siphen and Rein in the frontseat. (Insert quote from Dept. of State notes: “While in Cambodia, you may encounter road conditions that differ significantly from those in the United States….roads leading to rural areas are often poor…Cambodian drivers routinely ignore traffic laws…vehicles are often overloaded”).

School in Cambodia is a total of 5 hours a day, split into two periods split by a 3 hour lunch break. The school was made up of several long, very basic brick/stucco buildings on raised foundation of about 18 inches. The buildings formed the perimeter of a square with a very large open courtyard, in the middle of which stood a Buddha. Siphen brought us into the first classroom, which had extremely quiet and shy high schoolers that struggled with their English quite a bit. We introduced ourselves and broke up into groups.



School

 My group had 3 girls and 1 boy. I tried to ask very basic questions, but had a very difficult time getting them to understand what I was asking. We got through names, though each time I tried to pronounce one of their names, they would giggle. (They all had Khmer names). The boy was the most bold, though he was still very shy, he would try to answer some questions, and sometimes interpret my questions for the other girls. One girl didn’t seem thrilled to be there, and looked at me like I had 3 eyes everytime I asked her a question. The girl next to her would giggle in embarrassment and would block her face with her notebook and say something to the first girl every time I’d ask something. The third girl would try a little bit but was still very shy. Finally we got to my specialty, numbers. We worked through English numbers, and they taught me Khmer numbers one through ten: moi, baiy, beey, bwon, pfram, pfram-moi, pfram-baiy, pfram-beey, pfram-bwon, nam. At one point as I struggled remembering them, the boy who had been starting to enjoy me on the hotseat, rather sternly stopped me mid word and said “No, that’s wrong.” And pronounced it correctly. Then he somewhat recoiled from his own sudden burst of confidence, and we all laughed a bit. At this point Siphen, informed us it was time to move along to the next class. I told her I wasn’t finished learning my numbers yet, but alas, it was time to move on regardless. 



The next room had much more outgoing students who had a much stronger grasp of English. Siphen asked Kalyssa to be the teacher, and had her go to the board and explain and write down where we were from. With some coaxing, this class asked some questions as a large group about where we were from and a few other basic questions. After our family talked for quite a bit to the class, Rein talked a bit about herself, Iceland, and Vikings. The kids who were all around 17, had never heard of Vikings, and none of them had ever seen snow. Rein, whom I would have sworn was a teacher herself, with her tremendous skills with the kids, fascinated them with the stories of the solstices in Iceland where there is either 24 hours of daylight or 24 hours of darkness.



We then broke into groups again, and had another brief discussion. This time we were able to talk a lot more. This class had quite a few students with western names. There was an Elizabeth, a Phillip, and an Andrew (I’m not 100% sure these where their given names, or if they had selected English names for English conversations.) Partway through this class, it came out that I enjoy music and play guitar. Siphen then went and got a guitar for me, a drum for Kalyssa, and we took a brief field trip to the library where there was a piano, and we had a little concert. The piano was electric and worked decently. The guitar was a crude non-branded acoustic with a useless second fret. Unfortunately, neither Allie or I were quite prepared for this, and couldn’t think of anything that we could do together. So Allie stumbled through a song, I stumbled through a song, but we did receive lots of applause anyway for our efforts. After this, it was time to head back to Siphen’s house.

Kalyssa's Group

On the way back, we started talking about how different it was in Cambodia vs. Hong Kong where we had just come from, for example the immigrations officer smiling and greeting Kalyssa. Siphen shared her own stories of travelling through America and how unfriendly everyone seemed in the airport. She had been in Atlanta once and was trying to figure out what gate her flight was departing from, and asked someone who curtly responded: “Check the screens” and walked away. She had been through LAX once as well and had similar experiences. I agreed , that our airports are probably the worst (especially O’hare) for unfriendly officials and employees, not to mention some of the travelers going through them.



At this point, we were all very hot as it was 88 and extremely humid (and we hadn’t seen air conditioning since we got off the plane. Natalie was feeling quite bad from all the heat, and so on the way back home Siphen stopped at a Tela Mart so we could get some icecream, and sit in an airconditioned room for a few minutes. Coincidentally, while we were there, the other family staying at the homestay from New York (though their daughter Diana who was also with them lives in Cambodia teaching for the Peace Corps) had taken a rickshaw to the same place for snacks.

Once we got back I had a little bit of time to wander the outskirts of the property. Allie, and Kally and I took a walk through the rice paddies which were still dry. They continued as far as you could see in most directions with a few other homes visible in the distance. There was a lone cow tethered in the middle of one of them, and Kalyssa went to pet it. 10 minutes later, a girl about Kalyssas age came and untethered it and took it away. When we got back to the homestay lunch was ready. We had some sort of breaded fish, fried rice, watermelon and mangos. Once again, everything was excellent, and everyone loved it.



At lunch, we talked with Rein about how little we knew about Cambodia, Pol Pot, and Khmer Rouge. She made a very interesting comment that has stuck in my mind for awhile. “I think in America, there are some things they don’t want you to know. Maybe that is why they did not teach more about it. In Iceland, all of our school textbooks said “Not allowed for distribution in the USA.” I don’t know what it is that is in them that is not allowed though. That certainly makes you ponder our education system here, and the more I’ve thought about it since the conversation, the more it has made me uneasy…



I mentioned that Siphen had told me I should talk to her brother, Penh, about how he had escaped from the Khmer Rouge. Rein was sitting with us and said she had heard the story earlier on the day that Natalie and I and the girls arrived. Though she said she didn’t want to spoil it for us, she explained that he was in Phnom Penh and had some sort of official job. He knew that something was going on that didn’t seem right when all the citizens were being told to evacuate from the city because of the alleged impending onslaught of bombs. He ended up fleeing, and narrowly escaped capture from the Khmer Rouge on two separate occasions. He decided his best chance to survive was to flee towards Thailand and did so on foot (this is a several hundred mile journey). After walking approximately 60 kilometers his shoes had entirely fallen apart, and he had to continue barefoot. At one point some of the Khmer Rouge soldiers had found him and started spraying the jungle with AK-47s attempting to kill him. He ran zig zig away from them, and literally was getting pelted with dirt from the bullets hitting the ground around him.

As he continued onward he needed to eat, but did not know what was edible and what was poisonous while in the jungle. So he bagan to track the monkeys, and watch what they were eating, and would only eat the fruits and leaves that he saw them eating. For 36 days, he continued his journey until he finally made it to the border of Thailand and ultimately to a refugee camp. During the same time, unfortunately, their brother Poong did not fare as well. He was captured and killed by S21 and was dumped in a mass grave. The family was never able to recover his remains.

Today, Penh lives in the Midwestern US (though he’s now visiting Cambodia for a few weeks) and works in a major teaching hospital . Truly an amazing story.



After lunch, Kalyssa found a couple girls her age, that were going out to cut the grass (done with an 8 inch curved hand knife. ) She disappeared off with them and helped for awhile- or so she says she did . After they did their work, one of them grabbed her hand and brought her back to the house to sit at a small table off behind the residences. She pulled out a magazine, and began pointing at objects, and looking at Kalyssa. Kalyssa would say the word in English. The girl would then repeat in English. Then the girl would say the word in Khmer, and the Kalyssa would repeat it in Khmer. This is unfortunately a priceless moment that I did not see in person. However, the fact that this was an experience that she had completely on her own likely increases the effectiveness of it on her.

While this was going on, Diana (the Peace Corps girl from New York) and Rein each had Ukuleles with them. Siphen and Mach had an electric piano, which Diana’s brother played, and I had the guitar that Siphen had brought with from the school. We had an hour long jam session through some pop songs from the last couple decades that Rein had chord charts for. One of the elder women at one point came over very animated motioning to me and talking to Diana in Khmer (Diana speaks Khmer fluently) I thought perhaps I was annoying her, or she didn’t like American music or something. Afterwards I asked Diana what that was all about and she said, that she simply was complaining that she couldn’t hear me well enough.

Late afternoon was once again filled with Siphen’s afterschool English classes (which she is highly selective about who is able to attend, based on how much effort and interest they show in learning English). These are done at the home in small open-air school house built in the front of their property. Diana led much of the classes, and Rein led the music and games. Diana gave a lesson on the lyrics of “I can see clearly now” and then we all played the song and sang it with the kids. They we also did “Baby” by Justin Beiber which they all knew very well. This was followed by one of the student’s performing a very choreographed dance to the entirety of “Bring the Boys Out” which was pretty entertaining.

Siphen's Afterschool English Class

Dinner provided 3 main dishes, one veggie dish, mini grilled ribs, and fish curry, and Mach walked around providing cans of Angkor beer (warm of course). I’ve never tried fish curry. Though I love curry, fish didn’t seem like something that would go good in it. I’ve never been more wrong in my life. I think I ate just about the entire bowl. Afterwards we played some Uno with the Americans (Natalie won), and then had a story from Siphen who talked a little about the Khmer Rouge and her family, and a little about the history of the home stay.

Unfortunately for me, Penh’s niece is in the hospital with what they think is Dengue fever, and he spent most of the day 2 hours away in Phnom Penh. He did arrive back for dinner, but of course was spending time with his family, as much of his trip has been spent at the hospital, so I never did get to hear his story first hand.

Dishwashing

The Outdoor Kitchen