Ministry:
Emunah Ministry with Pastor Sin Somnang
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
What we did:
-Taught English
-Built relationships with the children who lived at the church and loved on them through things like movie nights, adventuring to the park, blowing bubbles, eating Popsicles, making bracelets and just having fun together. The church has taken in children that would have become orphans and cares for them and adopts them into the church family they have created.
-Took kids from the church and slum to play soccer and made them dinner or brought them back to the church restaurant for dinner. We were able to donate the meal we made to the church and the church feeds the kids every week as part of their community ministry.
-Support the church ministry by giving their clothing store and restaurant business.
-Supported other businesses that support NGOs and non-profits working with such issues as human/sex trafficking and child safety.
-Cleaned common area of the basement of church which is used as a home for the kids, the pastor and his family, and others who live at the church.
-Built relationships with church members, community members, and women who worked at dance bars.
-Joined a nearby team in their soccer ministry working with young adults.
Money:
-This was really interesting. Cambodia uses USD just as much as it uses the local currency of riel. A little over 4,000 riel equals one USD and so most places will give you the USD and riel price as options to pay with the assumption that $1=4,000 riel. Instead of getting American change back from a purchase, you receive the part that would be change in riel.
-Almost everything you’d buy in Cambodia cost about a dollar. It was 3,500 for an iced coffee. $1-2 for a meal at Cambodian restaurants. $1 per person to get anywhere (this is of course the white person rate, we realized that once we knew what we were doing or when traveling with locals we could go for less, but most tuk tuks asked for $1 per person or more initially). Snacks such as ice cream or candy was also around $1 and snacks like chips (both potato and of the fruit varieties) were more expensive. Pineapples that were peeled for you at stands were somewhere between 50 and 75 cents. Should you choose to be a tourist and eat the infamous Tarantulas, that usually was also a $1.
Language:
This was the first month that the language felt really challenging. In Kenya, Nepal, and India a lot of people spoke at least some English, particularly in the touristy areas or where they were likely to see English speakers (such as nicer restaurants and most transportation). In Rwanda and Uganda most ways of transport and touristy places knew enough for us to get around or communicate on a basic level. In many countries, the children are taught English as well and so you could usually talk to the kids. The kids in Cambodia are precious and are learning but their English is mostly still pretty basic (though probably better than my basic Spanish). Many of those who do know English in Cambodia pronounced things differently than what we’re used to with American English and so we had some difficulty understanding people this month.
Arkun=thank you
Baat=yes
A-dtay=no
Lee-hai= goodbye (informal)
K’nyom ch’moo-ah= my name is
Gah-fay g’dao= coffee
Gah-fay dteuk-gork=iced coffee
Hello varied from each area and we could never figure out when/where it was appropriate to say which one.
Other interesting things:
-Cambodians hand you items by holding them in both of their hands and allowing you to grab the middle. This is often accompanied by a bow or head nod.
-Similarly to the Nepalise, we were often greeted with hands together and a slight bow; unlike Nepal, this gesture wasn’t accompanied by the utterance of “nameste”
-This month we got around mostly by using “tuk tuks” which in Cambodia means a motorcycle with a cart type attachment that fits up to four or five people comfortably and up to nine or so not comfortably. Only the locals were allowed to ride with more than six at a time.
-Wearing socks with your sandals is still something we see, though not by everyone like in India; sometimes people wore just sandals, and sometimes they wore socks too.
-Street food made our meals this month and so we ate a lot of fried noodles, chicken, fried egg, rice noodle soup, rice, and vegetables. We also had access to some familiar to America food such as KFC (which we’ve found in the cities of most countries) and Domino’s.
-Street coffee is amazing, at least once we figured out how to order it. They would mix hot coffee with something we think was condensed milk with sweetener, sugar, and more condensed milk and pour it all over a giant cup of ice.
-The consequences of Pol Phot’s regime can still be strongly felt. There is an anger against religion because it didn’t protect or save them. There’s been a walk away from Buddhism and Hinduism because they don’t see any hope in it. Christians are still a very small portion of the population but the faith is growing in recent years.
-I found another JMU graduate on the day that we visited Angkor Wat (the largest religious monument in the world). This doesn’t reflect anything about Cambodia but I just thought it was super cool! 🙂
-The architecture in Cambodia is absolutely beautiful and detailed.
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