Dosa and Coconut water: My Cambodian Diet

All my life, I have wanted to be in proximity to great south Indian food, when I’m not in the proximity of my mother (and her cooking). Who knew my prayers would be answered in Phnom Penh! I’ve discovered a wonderful restaurant, with very cheap, very tasty South Indian authentic dosas, which I eat literally every day. Makes me so happy!! I also drink lots and lots of coconut water (and then eat the inside “malai”, the fleshy soft-coconut part of it). This is another wish I thought would only be fulfilled in India. I’m so le lucky!

“People from India are black. Why are you white?”

This was one of the first greetings I received during my initial trip to the provinces north east of Phnom Penh. I’m sure both my grandmothers would be mighty proud to hear such compliments around the supposed fairness of my skin, and what a “compliment” it is! Besides the political correctness issue, (sometimes I find the bluntness refreshing, I’ll admit), village life is incredible. These people live with no electricity, no running piped water supply system, forget heating or air-conditioning systems and completely absolutely forget indoor nice clean lavatory facilities. They sleep on hard bumpy wooden beds with no mattress, and I’m sort of shocked with myself for being surprised at this, and finding it uncomfortable. In many ways, I don’t feel like a foreigner here, because I sense such similarities between this place and India, but I forget that seeing poverty is not the same as living it. That is much harder. Seriously.

I had to spend a whole day in the village interviewing people, then sleeping in one of those houses at night – complete with no electricity, no ammenities whatsoever, – and be a fully functional human being the next day, after a night when the cockerels had conversations with one another starting at 3:00 am, right outside my window, after having slept in a very hard incredibly bumpy uncomfortable bed. It was rough. Also, everyone goes to bed the moment it gets dark, i.e. 7:30 or 8:00 pm!

I have seen poverty – lots of it, and in some of the worst extremes, and ironically in some of the wealthiest cities (like New York) so it’s been even more striking in those instances, and I know how poor people in India live. But it stops there. I’ve seen it, but have never experienced it. For this trip, the initial survey data I have to collect about handwashing facilities and practices at home requires me to stay in the villages for up to 4 or 5 days at a time, attempting to conduct up to ten 40-minute interviews a day, in the heat and vegetarian-free food zones of these dwellings far away from the big city.

Needless to say, the first days I spent there were tough on me, and I was all the while aching to return to be mybeloved Phnom Penh, with it’s edible vegetarian food i.e. my favourite Dosa Restaurant, and my comfortable bed, and my airconditioning, and my friends.So that has been really tough – seeing how attached I am to my creature comforts. And really, the biggest thing is food. It’s amazing how grumpy I get when I don’t have proper food I like, and that is near on impossible in the villages, when they eat rice and meat all the time. Which means I only get to eat the plain rice. Even the thought makes me ridiculously upset…

However, given that of my 8 weeks remaining in the city, I have to spend about 5 weeks worth of them in the villages, I’m sure I’ll get over these issues soon enough, and learn to find a way to combat the food situation. I’m trying to remind myself that it could be much worse, and that Phnom Penh isn’t so far away…

I love it :) I love it not :( I love it :) !

So in a post below, I think I described my very first moments in Phnom Penh – the fake familiarity I experienced, coupled with the shocking sense of otherness, of not belonging. This like and dislike are the first two rapid phases of culture adjustment – as explained to me by an Iraqi friend of my roommates, during an evening where he cooked Iraqi food for a very electic group of people – a dutch girl, a morrocan, an american, and my indian-british self. So it seemed appropriate to be talking of such things during our fairly international evening…

The third phase is a more meaningful engagement with the place you live in, learning to balance the likes and the dislikes, the process of rendering the unfamiliar familiar, and I think I’m in the phase now. It took a while, perhaps because work started off with a few bumps, and I was plunged into my activities here, rather than easing in gradually. It reminds of the time when my parents literally threw me into the deep end of the pool when I was a scared four year old. The best way to learn, I guess. I learned fast then, and I’m learning faster now!

And it’s amazing to think back on my very first deer-in-the-headlights- morning walk in Phnom Penh, only two weeks ago, and consider how well I know that same street now – Sihanouk Blvd. I totally direct my tuk-tuk drivers, and have a fairly comprehensive mental map of the place. Knowing how to get where I want to get, to pay the appropriate price and not be ripped off completely is extremely liberating, and I can very quickly imagine a life for myself in this city. I realize that once the initial shock is over, I can reasonable adjust to living anywhere. I always forget this when I have been in familiar settings for a long time, but those initial moments when you wrestle with a place – those are the most essential reasons for travelling, for getting out of your comfort zone, and readjusting – ’cause when you do, the reward is amazing! To be able to know an unfamiliar place, to learn about other people’s experiences, and see how othere people live, it totally absolutely broadens your mind. It’s not just a cliche. This experience has really taught me something I find it easy to forget when I stop for a little while – that the life I envisage for myself is one of constant travel and exploration, and that I’m going to be totally not ok if that doesn’t happen for me…though I think it will : p [I do have to add that living in Phnom Penh is easy. I have pretty much everything I had in the states, it's just in a different setting, where there are some additional cultural issues...the real learning curve for me has been visiting and staying at the villages, which has been sort of a cultural adjustment of its own...but more details on that above]

Oh, and supposedly, the fourth phase of cultural adjustment would be when you return to your original home, and begin to miss your life in this previously unfamiliar place. I’m sure that will happen to me as well, but then I have a hard time with endings anyways…

Breakdancing in Cambodia…

I’ve been meaning to talk about this for some time. I was out last weekend – in a club, on a boat in the river – and suddenly the music stopped, and we were made to gather in a circle on the dancefloor, and out came a whole host of interesting performers. An Irish Beat boxer opened the show – kind of random and incredible – and he was followed by Cambodia rappers singing in Khmer (the local language). I’ve read a little about the global influence of hip-hop culture, yet it seemed so bizarre to see them here…

The last act was a Cambodian breakdancing troup called “The Tiny Tunes” , about four boys and a girl (the girl was the coolest of the bunch, I have to say…). Pictured above, she exuded so much confidence and energy, and attitude. It was a really interesting sight, and they all were incredible. It turns out there is an unbeliveable story behind them – they were started by K.K., a man who was raised from infancy in Long Beach, California, but had arrived in the us as a refugee from the Khmer Rouge regime when he was a baby. At 18, a member of the Crips, he was busted for armed robbery and only then did he discover he was an undocumented immigrant in the united states, and was deported under a law that mandates deportation of convicted felons if they are undocumented. His story is absolutely amazing and was infact written up in the New York Times. It totally shows that positive change can absolutely be made through creative media such as this, by absolutely anyone…awesome and inspiring!

Copy and Paste this URL to read his story in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/world/asia/30dancer.html

Mandatory photo of Monk-in-Moto

If you’ve seen the lonly-planet-guides to this part of the world over the past few years, you’ll see they have the sort of “Mandatory monk-in-moto(rcycle)” photos on the front cover…therefore, this photo (in the header to my blog) is my little shout out to them…I took it yesterday, and since then, I’ve had five other opportunities to take such similar photos…maybe I’ll make a little collection

My purpose in Cambodge

The basic employment “thesis of my summer” is that I’m here doing some work related to handwashing. I’m bascially going into villages to see what sort of handwashing equipment they have, asking them to test some exisiting handwashing devices to see if this might improve their practices.

Dehydration leading from Diarrhea, and other water born disease that can be avoided by handwashing are some of the main causes of death in this part of the world. What i like about this concept is that handwashing is such a simple practice, but it really does require a major shift in priorities and thinking to be able to perform it often, especially at key times  – basically anytime there is fecal contact, so after using the loo, and after cleaning their babies bottoms…and interestingly, this practice does not happen here. The main problem is that it’s really hard. The water is in one place (generally massive “jars” made of concrete that collect rainwater), the makeshift basin (big plastic bowl) is somewhere else, the soap (or “shoop” as my translator prounces it hehe) is in a third location, not to mention where and how they wipe their wet hands…and all the research so far suggests that having a fixed location for handwashing is perhaps one of the most important elements that facilitates this practice…

In staying in the village overnight, as I recently had to do – i realize HOW TOUGH it is to achieve this practice, when nothing is in a fixed location. It’s nigh on impossible, especially in the evenings and early mornings when everything is dark, as there is no electricity…not to mention the fact that there are a gazillion other things to do, and this practice does not feel like a priority.

The Flatmates: Jo-jo and Jen

So, I am extremely blessed to live with two of the most perceptive, most intelligent, most awsome girls, and have them as my very first guides to this intriguing place…

Dr. Jennifer Lee Murphy, PhD is a scientist, and overall fantastic girl She’s been here for almost a year, doing some stuff, currently she works with the World Bank, and is returning to the states to work for the Centers for Disease Control (yeah, she’s a smart cookie).

Master Jobien Monster (LLM)  (or jo-jo)  is a trained lawyer, experienced lingerie importer, and carbon-reduction-strategist. She’s lived in the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, and now Cambodia…a free spirit and the most perceptive person I’ve ever met.

Me + roommates

Phnom Penh, initial thoughts…

Almost two full weeks in Phnom Penh.

Gosh, SO MUCH has happened since I arrived, and I barely found time to capture it all. I’m going to be much more vigilant about posting from now on.

Hokay, so I arrived into this city, and it was such a bizarre feeling – in some ways it reminds me so much of Delhi, and so I feel a vague sense of familiarity. I’m alwasy intrigued by the pavements of a city – and this city’s pavements really reminded me of India – those same concrete black and yellow painted blocks – but it is much cleaner, much less congested, much much less crowded than my memories of back home, so overall, I have been incredibly impressed. This familiarity to my motherland was both good and bad, because ultimately it was quite disappointing to realize that I actually it wasn’t living in India, and consequently, I didn’t know the place, I didn’t speak the language, and I had to get to my flat by myself, in a “Tuk Tuk” (more on this later), alone – rather than having 20 people greet me at the airport Actually, I recently read a really interesting piece from my hero, Pico Iyer, about finding happiness in displacement, even when one’s home isn’t routed. He has a quote I love, where he says

“I am not rooted in a place, I think, so much as in certain values and affiliations and friendships that I carry everywhere I go; my home is both invisible and portable”

But my flatmates and I discussed this intensely last night, and we decided that it’s totally fine travel the world without a home, but it’s truly enjoyable if you have someone to do it with. Pico Iyer has his “sweetheart”, his wife. Steinbeck had his poodle Charley, and if I do this, then I have to have someone too. I absolutely have to have a companion, in whom I place this sense of rootedness.

Anyhow, that first night I had to stay in a guesthouse – since I didn’t officially move in till the next day, and the out-going roommate was still staying in the apt – so I had arranged to meet my flatmate outside my guesthouse at 9:00 am.  I woke up in the morning, got showered and dressed, and “approximated” the time difference, and decided that it must be 8:45 and would be meeting my flatmate any moment then. So I go downstairs, check out, and then ask what the time is. 7:30 in the morning. Sigh. So in an effort to kill 1.5 hours of the early morning in a city I did not know, I attempted to find tea. I walked up and down this extremely strange main street, thinking everyone was looking at me, and it was just totally aweful. I felt out of place, lost, hot, and totally disappointed.

Eventually though, I did find some tea (in front of the guesthouse…) where I was told I would not be sold one piece of toast, that I had to buy at least two, but three would be better ☺ Oh Cambodia. I sat and wrote in my journal, sketched my scared impression of myself…and waited for Jo-jo.

The Long journey begins…

Just had a really intensive week in Davis, California, working with a prof there, preparing all of the documents for my work in PP. It’s intense work and I’m drained…just flew from San Francisco to LA, and am about to board a flight from LAx to Tokyo – then Tokyo to Bangkok. Overnight in Bangkok, then a flight to Cambodia. So it just dawned on me how far away this place is, literally on the other side of the globe…a long long way to go….

The hot ex-pat dating scene

So I was in a bar recently with some people, sharing the news that I’d be in Phnom Penh this summer. A friend of mine responds “Oh my god! Did you know Cambodia is, like, where the hot ex-pat dating scene is?” Yes, apparently there exists such a thing. Who knew.

Apparently there are lots of tall blonde Australians all over the place in “PP” so if I find me one – or at the very least, if I observe in someway that the scene a) exists and b) is “hot” – I will certainly report it here