Cambodia. Country number four. Month four, December. Life as a traveling missionary.
A lot has happened since my last blog post. And please pardon my lack of blog posts, as we currently do not have easy access to internet like in past months. But before I get to all that, let me start with the end of my time in Vietnam. And since my posts are rare this month, this is a long one!
Everybody enjoyed Vietnam. The people were friendly and full of smiles and hellos. I grew somewhat familiar with the city, roaming the streets and recognizing certain shops, in spite of the abundance of mobile phone stores and bakeries similar in appearance. Our young host traveled with us to HoChiMinh, our departure city. We will all miss him, as he is a great example of a young man working for Christ, even in the midst of anti-christs. I roomed with my teammate, Heith, in a room likely not much larger than the spacious bathroom in your own home. The beds were slightly less torturous than those at the hotel in DaNang, and we did have an abundance of hot water, as well as an efficient AC unit. It was here that I tried to finalize the month’s budget information, and, per word on the street, began to ready myself to relinquish myself of the responsibilities of team treasurer. I enjoyed a fresh fruit smoothie from ‘the smoothie lady’ as everyone called her, before bedding down and packing for our next move.
The next day, all the teams loaded up on two buses and made the haul across the border into Cambodia, passing through security along the way. Due to a logistical error, I had to abandon my team and sit on a bus with other teams, but it was a relatively quiet and brief ride (6 hours?) Our debrief city would be Pnomh Penh. It’s a large city, as you can find out by a simple Google search, or, in my case, by standing on the rooftop of the hotel, seeing the concrete, glass, and square buildings sprawl from horizon to horizon. All the teams lodged at a single hotel, brought there by tuk-tuks. The tuk-tuk would become our most used form of transportation. It’s like the yellow cab of NYC, but different (same same, but different, as they would say). It’s a motorbike rigged with a trailer hitch above the rear section of the seat. Hook up a trailer outfitted with a canopy and two bench seats to the motorbike, and voila, you have a tuk-tuk. World Racers are known to have a disregard for suggested limitations when it comes to travel arrangements, and the tuk-tuk, with a supposed occupancy level of 4 persons, would often be seen carrying 7 Racers and luggage. At any rate, we made it to the hotel.
It was here that we learned of team changes. Every team was changed. Treasurers were changed. New squad leaders arose. I now have a new team, with one pre-existing teammate, Hannah, our musical talent. My new teammates are Zach, our leader, Leanne, Aubrie, and Kaleena. After a bit of thought, we joked that our team name should be Granola, because most of us have a bit of health-nut hippy in us. I came up with an acronym: God Redeems All Nationalities Offering Life Abundantly (John 10:10). And so it is, Team GRANOLA.
After a couple of days of hanging out in Pnomh Penh, and seeing F Squad at the YWAM facility to worship with them, my team moved on to meet our host in a farming village about an hour and a half away from the city. This is the kind of Race I’ve been craving; a disconnect from urban life, a lack of electronic connection, an abundance of vegetation and a shortage of concrete and zooming vehicles. Welcome to Kampang Speu.
Our host is a young man, 33 years old, with a wife and a 1 year old boy. He shares a home with some of his family, with other family members living nearby. Rice fields run abundantly throughout the land. The majority of Cambodia’s population is under 30 years old as a result of Pul Pot’s genocide efforts. A large percentage of that population is made up of teenagers. 80% of the entire country is made up of farmers. Kampang Speu is one such farming village. It is a common sight to see wagons with wooden wheels being pulled down the dirt roads by a yoked pair of white cattle, hauling a load of rice stalks. There are basically two options for income in this area: farms or factories. Several textile factories in the district employ countless Cambodians, paying little for long hours of labor in poor conditions. This is the stuff you read in textbooks, or see portrayed in international lawsuits on TV. But here, it’s a way of life. Vans and tuk-tuks and wagons and buses haul dozens of workers in and out of the community before the sun’s early rise, dew causing the dust to collect and spatter against the edges of said vehicles’ fenders. When they return to their homes after dusk, dry red dust baked under the sun fills the air as it’s stirred by the motion of the wheels turning. Tired villagers unload and enter their homes for food and rest before repeating the process the next morning.
A school sits about 200 meters from our host’s home. Every morning, boys and girls uniformed in blue bottoms and white tops pour onto the dirt road from little trails and endless driveways, like water filling a river from its many tributaries. Class starts at 7am sharp for them, and they are released at 11am. Many of the children head to the rice fields to help their families harvest their living after class. All through the day, poultry and cattle roam the dirt trails in search of food. Early in the morning, boys will lead a few head of cattle up the roads and stake them near an area of green grass. Barbed wire fencing marks some of the property boundaries, but for the most part, it all seems very communal.
In regards to my team and our activities, we arise for prayer and words at 8am daily. Each day someone else leads the 30 minute morning session. If some of us feel rested enough, we get up a bit earlier for a sunrise jog. Breakfast comes at 8:30 daily, and usually consists of noodles much like Ramen, perhaps mixed with various vegetables, or an oniony omelet on the side. We are usually free after breakfast until 11:30, but some days we head to the rice fields after breakfast to help our host’s family gather rice. We’ve all been taught how to gather and stack the bundles, as well as how to use a sickle to cut the stalks and place them in the fields to be picked up later. Lunch is from 11:30 to 12:00, which always has rice as a base, and may be accompanied by veggies and small bits of meat. At noon, English teaching sessions begin. It works out great since our team has 6 people; we pair up for 3 classes, broken down by age. I teach the older kids with Aubrie from 4-5pm. We have one-on-one time with the kids from 2-3pm, and a break from 3-4pm. Sometimes the 1-on-1’s don’t happen if some of the kids are in the rice fields for the afternoon. When we’re not teaching, we usually sit in the shade of our little home, talking amongst ourselves, reviewing scripture, or playing with the neighbor’s kids, all with the sound of little caramel colored children splashing naked in the pond out front.
I quite enjoy teaching English. Most of the kids have just memorized phrases, like “Hello! How are you? What is your name?” without really having any comprehension of the words. It gives us joy to see a look of perplexity on their faces when we try to explain things like how to make an affirmative a negative, or how to form an interrogative, or what the definitions of “too” are, and then, slowly and surely, they catch on and begin making their own sentences with what they just learned. After our teaching lesson is over, the team spends some time together before dinner from 6-6:30pm.
Not surprisingly, dinner also is made primarily of rice, and may include veggies with bits of meat, or a slab of fish covered in a pineapple salsa of sorts, or on some seemingly special occasions, French fries! Dessert is not part of the menu, but we are sometimes treated to a fresh coconut, or a glass of iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk resting at the bottom. The ice, however, is questionable, as it comes in block form, resting on the ground, rinsed off in a 5-gallon bucket, and is then sawed into pieces and crushed with a hammer inside a sack. I have fallen rather ill once this month already, with food being the suspected cause, so I am becoming more cautious of what I consume (though it could very well have been related to any number of things, like a general lack of hygiene, or even a mosquito [Zach spent the first week overcoming Dengue Fever]).
After dinner, a pair of us will lead Bible study for a group of about 20 kids, for about an hour. They love learning new songs and singing along, and hearing classic stories like David & Goliath. At the end of each session, the students always sing out “Goodbye teacher! Goodbye my friend! See you tomorrow!” This of course is incredibly rewarding for us.
Once the day’s activities are over, we take turns bathing in one of two rooms. Oh, and just for further description, the main house has an uneven, broken concrete floor, with a few concrete walls and doorways (as is the case with the bathroom and shower stall), but is mostly separated by tarps or sheetmetal or wooden planks. The roof was originally thatched with palm, but has mostly been replaced with tin. Electricity just came to this village 4 months ago. The water comes from a well, and is not heated. So to bathe, I fill a bucket or saucepan and pour it over myself, with the intermittent scrub of a soapy loofa. Needless to say, my hair is becoming quite greasy and unpresentable. Oh, and there’s a pig pen adjacent to the bathing stalls, so it’s quite confusing to feel cleaner but smell only pig feces and ammonia.
In the evening, the team will gather in our concrete dwelling that sits about 100 meters from the main house, and talk like a family unit, discussing our trials and triumphs of the day, sharing different insights or words of encouragement. Then we retreat into our individual tents to avoid the bombardment of Dengue bearing mosquitoes, hoping that our air pads with stay inflated just long enough to spare our backs the ache of waking up on the concrete.
This is Monday through Friday. The weekends are our own, and on Sunday we attend a local church with our host, which is open air under a pole-barn with a pastor who seems to know English pretty well. This is the Race I envisioned, and I appreciate this experience.
