i almost missed it

It’s so surreal that I’m here. I’m writing this from the floor of Holy Mountain Methodist Church in Phnom Penh, Cambodia while listening to 30 women from districts all over Cambodia discuss what the most desperate problems are in their respective communities. Every district reports the same problems: illiteracy, kids dropping out of school at age 7, persecution as Christians, pointless violence among young people, no clean water, drunk husbands, disempowered women, no sanitation, no concept of hygiene, no health care, migration to Thailand, babies born on dirt floors and women bleeding to death hours after the baby’s born, no teachers, un- or underpaid pastors. They’re trying to decide among themselves how they as Methodist women can use information they’ve learned from this 3-day women’s conference to counter them…as if a series of lectures, even pertinent ones, could really solve nation-wide, age-old crises of chronic poverty, injustice, and governmental corruption.

Yesterday, we had people from Cambodia (34), the Philippines (4), Singapore (2), Kenya (1), Zimbabwe (1), Bangladesh (1), and the US (me!) all in one room listening to presentations on what women leadership looks like in the Cambodian church. Most of my attention was fixed on the Khmer speaker and Tola, our interpreter, because I was taking a steady stream of dictation for future publications. But once in a while it hit me: Wow. I’m here sweating in a church cooled off by fans, sitting on a cushion on the floor or in a wire chair for 14 hours a day, complaining in my mind to high heaven about the inefficiencies of the workshop and how Cambodian Standard Time isn’t quite to my Western liking and that I didn’t get my coffee that morning…and I almost missed it.

Most of what I do here is help the missionaries share stories: stories about blind acid burn victims who are now struggling to keep their family alive, stories about modern medical miracles and the transforming the power of healing prayer, stories about how hard-working people with only a small micro-loan can build for themselves entire businesses and send their children to school. When you’re hearing so many stories, you can sometimes miss it. I guess it’s like becoming desensitized to violence in the US because all our movies are painted with it – or, probably more accurately, like living on your own personal island in the Bahamas and, after day after day of monotonous beauty, eventually taking your little isle of paradise for granted. It’s a fine balance, visiting children in an orphanage and having to sit and smile while they perform dances for you, their cherished American visitors; it’s a fine balance you have to maintain between holding it all at a distance – keep it in a picture or a Word document, just don’t let them get too close – and cratering into a little ball of sobs right on the spot. I’m only here for four short months. There are enough wrenching stories here to make you want to hide where it’s pretty and clean, where there’s potable water available to the public and a solid justice system and freedom and functioning child protection services. Where you don’t have to hear about a mother threatening to sell her six-year-old daughter into the sex trade unless her 16-year-old daughter reenters it…a place where you don’t have to hear about all of that unless you want to. But see? I almost missed it again.

I almost missed it as I listened to and wrote down the testimony of Srey Aun, a woman blinded by an acid attack at age 19 and now, with the help of a vision from God teaching her how to crochet (!!!), now sells bags at the market to support herself and her family. I kept her story on the page and wouldn’t let it sink in – there are so many acid burn victims here that an organization has founded BABS, “Bags by Acid Burn Survivors.” One Srey Aun is one too many. But I almost missed it, too, as I listened to my housemate talk about her work at Bloom, an organization that rescues women from the sex industry and trains them in a craft. She told me about a brothel owner who’d become so sick that he was even coming to Christians for help and prayer. Half of me tried to be indifferent to the incredible pain she deals with every day, and the other half empathized with all the women under the brothel owner’s power. And, torn between the two extremes, I nearly missed it.

On one hand, apathy; on the other, overwhelming despair that flirts with fatalism. Sometimes it’s so hard to recognize God’s face, his hope, in it all.

One Zambian song goes like this: “When Jesus comes, everything is going to be great.” I think they got it.

I’ve only been here a month, but every day it’s a struggle to wade past the incredible brokenness here to see hope. Sometimes the needs are too overwhelming, and I switch into “protection mode” – I hide in my little safe house of apathy. It’s difficult to know that I’m only one person, that God only gave me a limited amount to do here on earth, and that he will take care of the rest. I forget that he’s God and I’m not. It’s hard to remember that I’ll only be able to survive in situations like this if I cling to hope not half the time, not even most of the time, but every single moment. Without hope that this world isn’t all there is and that Jesus is coming again, I’d give up. But with it? Phew, Cambodia is beautiful.

I’m here for three more months. I don’t want to miss it again.

to thailand and back again (well, almost)

Hi, all!

A group from Virginia, a few of the CHAD (Community Health & Agricultural Development) staff, and I just got back to Phnom Penh from a few days’ excursion to Kampong Thom, Siem Reap, Banteay Meanchey, and Battambang (coolest, most confusing names ever – and that’s just the English transliteration). We were a small but mighty group: me, Tola (24-year old, newly married Cambodian translator), Romy (DS, Filipino), Mr. Thy (CHAD staff, Cambodian), and Ken (CHAD staff, Filipino); plus our entirely awesome driver, and four adults who work for the UMC in the US. Fun group!

Ok, so check this out: we started in Phnom Penh, went north to Siem Reap, then to the border in Banteay Meanchey (NW), and went south through Battambang to get back home. Quite a road trip!

Our main goal for this trip was for the VA team to see how they could coordinate volunteer teams most effectively in Cambodia in the future. With Mr. Thy and Ken, we also got to see many of the Methodist churches that the CHAD group partners with for rice banks, savings groups, and micro-finance loans for livestock. Actually, we were so far out in the provinces that we made it almost to the Thailand border (we were 10 minutes away from getting our passports out!). It was really wonderful to see in person the churches and projects that I’d heard about so much on paper. For example, check this out:

Pastor Eang Pros at Teok Thla Methodist Church has been around since 1993 (just one year after Christianity became legal in Cambodia), and they plan to build a preschool for their community and an affordable, 10-room, co-ed dormitory for university students who want to study at one of the three nearby institutions without going into irreversible debt after they graduate.

Bour Methodist Church’s rice bank stores and lends 5,600 kg of rice to the community, and two members became Christians because of the church's witness.

Daun Meay Church in Battambang is led by a young, single, female pastor whose rice bank is doing phenomenally well, and her congregants save 5000 Riel/month ($1.25/month) in their savings group (it’s basically a small community-led and run bank – people contribute a monthly portion of their salary, and they can borrow larger sums of money to be paid back with interest). The nearest hospital to this church is kilometers away and transportation is difficult to find, so many women deliver their babies on the side of the road, in transit.

There’s nothing like attending a district meeting with 15 pastors to find out what the true needs of the people are. In Ban Teay Meanchey, we found out that the main problem here in Cambodia was lack of education. To help flesh this out, here’s a scenario of a typical Cambodian family:

Mom, dad, sister, and baby brother own a bit of land out in the province where they grow rice during the wet season. They are far from any river or irrigation system and the dry season is very, very dry, so for most of the year, dad goes to Thailand along with the rest of the men in the village in a mass exodus to find work as an itinerant farmer or laborer. This leaves mom, sister, and baby brother in Cambodia, struggling to grow whatever crops they can on their parched piece of land until the rains come again. Since mom’s busy with cooking, cleaning, washing, and selling whatever food and trinkets she can at the local market, sister has to stay home from school to do all the actual planting and harvesting. Eventually, dad comes home from Thailand for the season…but it looks like he’s not making enough money to supplement his travel expenses and pay for the land that his family owns in Cambodia. So everyone picks up and moves to Thailand, where sister can work, too. If for some reason dad gets sick and dies or is duped into working for a company that enslaves workers for forced labor, mom and kids have to move back to Cambodia – but now they have nowhere to go, mom has no marketable skills because she’s illiterate, sister hasn’t been in school for years, and baby brother’s future is no brighter.

Seems a bit of a stretch, like I’m being overly dramatic for effect, maybe? Not so much. Apparently, this happens all the time. This is why the pastors here are so desperate for help – in the US, members of congregations support their churches and pastors with offerings and tithes; in Cambodia, pastors support their churches, congregations, and entire communities with what help they can. Needs are devastating and resources are scant, so sometimes, all they can do is pray. For a long while, prayer came with intense persecution because of their faith (remember, a 1.3% Christian nation!). In recent years, however, Christian churches are beginning to gain some respect in their communities because of their engagement in social activism – rice banks, savings groups, loans, and the like – so although times are rough, the pastors’ outlook is bright!

On the way to visiting churches and meeting pastors, our team got to pass through Siem Reap. Nearly everyone who’s been to this part of the world has told me that I had to go to Angkor Watt before I left – and lo and behold, I’ve not been even a month in Cambodia, and we got to see the temple!

Angkor Watt - main temple

Temple of Many Faces

There are monks everywhere! In the city, they walk from door to door with little yellow umbrellas to protect them from the sun, asking for food in exchange for prayers. We usually see them in the mornings only, because they aren't allowed to eat past 11am.

Since seeing the largest and most impressive of the 1,100 temples in Cambodia isn’t quite enough excitement for one day, we also went to a fair-trade silk farm to see how silk’s made. So cool.

Mulberry leaves (worm lunch)

The stars of the whole show themselves

Silk worms make cocoons and eventually turn into moths. One cocoon is just a really, really long thread that can be untangled to make silk!

So now it’s back in the office for a few days with occasional day-trips out of Phnom Penh, mainly to accompany CHAD staff members to their sites so I can help them write up stories for newsletters and inquiring supporters. In the meantime, I’m working on starting several newsletters with GBGM staff, getting ready for Women’s Week at the end of March, and getting to know Phnom Penh more with every day.All my love to y’all, and a huge digital hug!

Hugs and blessings,

Stephanie

(As always…) A dozen ways to know that you’re in the provinces of Cambodia:

(1) Something new is to be used. For example, if you buy a super-sharp knife for slicing beef, it will work excellently for cutting wire or tin cans, as well.

(2) Squatter toilets suck.

(3) With only Americans, it’ll take you just five hours to get from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap; with Filipinos, it’ll take you eight; but with all-locals, budget ten or more. Godda have your snack stops.

(4) Women are expected to ride side-saddle on moto-dops (on the back of motorcycles – the cheapest and most popular mode of travel). Suffice it to say, I haven’t quite got that down.

(5) When a package says “mint,” do not automatically assume that is mouthwash, however similar the package might be to Scope. It may, in fact, be shampoo. (A rather unfortunate blonde moment there!)

(6) Speeding tickets cost a whopping 5,000 Riel ($1.25). But no fear!! Our driver talked it down to 3,000 Riel ($0.75).

(7) Tree branches are handy replacements for construction cones when your tire goes flat in the middle of a busy two-lane highway.

(8) Side-street vendors sell gasoline in 1L glass Fanta bottles right next to the Fanta in 1L glass Fanta bottles. Personally, I think they look a little too similar for that.

(9) Having a little ancestor house perched in your front yard is essential – it’s like a front door. Everyone has one.

(10) It takes four people and two rounds of ice cream to decide if the vanilla is really coconut, why they call coconut something that tastes like peach, what kind of fruit “fruit” ice cream is supposed to be, and how on earth ice cream can be so different here than it is on the other side of the world.

(11) The insatiable desire to pass other cars on the road is even stronger here than it is in Peru!

(12) Palm trees aren’t just for Florida – they’re the national tree of Cambodia!

man, am i getting old...

Until about three weeks ago, I never even dreamed that I’d go to Asia, for vacation or mission work or just about anything. It was really a God thing that less than a month ago Katherine (my “host” UMC missionary here in Phnom Penh) contacted me with a perfect volunteer job description, available housing, and an incredibly flexible schedule for my arrival and departure. Maybe I should blame my 9^th grade World History teacher for his fascination with Mexico and resulting general neglect of the rest of the world, but I didn’t know a thing about Singapore, the Vietnam War, or even where Laos was before I came to Cambodia! So suffice it to say, when I got here, I had a lot to learn.

If you, too, were deprived of learning about Cambodian history in its full, here’s an appalling simplification of the basics and (more importantly, I think) the effect it’s had on the current population living in Cambodia today:

1.       Way back when, the Chinese dynasty began taking control of northern and middle Asia, pushing the Viet and Thai dynasty and their peoples to southern Asia (i.e. Cambodia, the land of the Khmers). Cambodia was effectively controlled by Vietnam leaders until the French came and took their place.

2.       When the French left, they allowed the Vietnamese to stay in-country as the upper-middle class. Obviously, this caused a bit of dissention.

3.       In a style very much like Hitler in Germany, the Khmer Rouge, a small purist group of Cambodians, decided to rise up against the Vietnamese in power and exterminate all non-Khmer peoples (including Chinese-Khmer, Viet-Khmer, Thai-Khmer, and the like). The group’s goal was to effectively start over – their dream was for Cambodia to be a feudalistic, purely Khmer, communist society. This meant that all non-Khmer and educated peoples had to go. Some were targeted and killed, but something like half of the population died in labor camps.

4.       After lots of bombing and general chaos, peace came finally by the late ‘70s and ‘80s, and the remaining population started having kids again. Christianity only became legal in 1992.

The effects? Over half the population is under the age of 20, and 70% is under 30. Since the educated were targeted, Cambodia is incredibly far behind other Asian countries in education, technology, and development. Since many young people’s parents are farmers in the provinces, they are unable to earn enough money to send their kids to school, and many don’t have a choice but to work for minimum pay ($1-2 a day) or crowd Phnom Penh’s slums, trying to find odd jobs to support themselves and their families.

Since Christianity’s only been around for 20 years, you can imagine how crazy it’s been for the Church – not only is there institutional poverty juxtaposed by ostentatious wealth (of the king and the upper, upper class) nearly everywhere you look, but the church itself in Cambodia is in its infancy. Persecution for being Christian is a real deal in a country where only 1.3% of the population claims itself Christian; the other 98.7% is mostly Buddhist.

So a country dominated by kids and teenagers: give that a second to marinate. The younger majority of the population have few, if any, positive older role models to follow and learn from, so in their place, hyper-consumerism – iPods, iPhones, diamonds, jewelry, designer shoes and handbags, cheap alcohol, and everything else that the media has told them that they should have and want – makes a fabulously convenient substitute. For those who desire a higher education, scholarships aren’t available, so they have to find a way to pay their own way through school or just not go.

Understandably, that’s quite a problem for a developing country. To counter it, Clara, a missionary from Bangladesh who works at the GBGM office, heads up “Street Kids,” a program designed to help children living in Phnom Penh stay out of trouble, go to school, and have a chance for a better life than their predecessors. I’ll work with Clara mainly before and around Eastertime, when she’ll be putting on a huge Easter celebration for the kiddoes.

Issues aren’t only with the inner-city young’uns, however. CHAD (“Community Health and Agricultural Development”), the group I’ve primarily worked with up to this point, mainly focuses on increasing the standard of living and well-being of the people who live in the provinces by providing micro-finance loans, introducing systems of saving money so farmers can buy more seed when they need it, and starting rice banks so communities can have extra stores of rice during times of drought. Their revolving credit loans are really cool: CHAD loans out $125 for 5 people ($25/person) with the understanding that each person will pay back $5/month. Within one month, the program has $25, another person can take out a loan, and the cycle continues. They do the same thing with cows and rice – it’s working beautifully!

This weekend, I’ll be heading out to Siem Reap (a historic city in the province…I’ll find out why it’s historic there, I’m sure), Anker Watt (!!!), and other towns with a couple of the CHAD staff and a few people from Virginia. They’re visiting to see how their church can best offer its assistance, support, and future teams to help the church in Cambodia, and I essentially get to tag along on their “exposure trip,” getting to learn a ton first-hand about what CHAD does within local congregations outside of Phnom Penh. I know I act like I’m allergic to taking pictures, but I’ll try my best to bring back some good ones. Exciting!

Hope y’all are doing wonderfully and are enjoying this new week! (Downloading pictures isn't exactly happenin this week...the internet's not that good!) All my love and many blessings,

Stephanie

PS – In case you’re feeling an itch to relocate, here are a few perks of living in Cambodia:

1.       You’ll get off women's day (this Thursday)!

2.       Tired of plain orange juice? OJ + mint + condensed milk is an acceptable substitute here.

3.       No more embarrassed whispering about feminine products…”sandwiches,” "bread," or "hamburger" are code words (oops! Secret revealed).

4.       Dislike the no-texting laws popping up all over the place? Texting while driving a moto on INSANE streets is actually legal and common.

5.       No more hundred-dollar tickets: a ticket for the passenger not buckling their seatbelt is just $1.25.

6.       You get to risk your life daily if you decide to venture out onto the main roads. Although people generally “drive on the right,” that’s basically a suggestion – if there’s more room on the left, then drive on the left. Just remember: the biggest vehicle always wins (it's a rough world out there).

7.       Apparently, dogs can ride motos, too.

8.       Your 8.5 women’s shoe size is monstrous for little tiny Asian feet shoe stores…so make sure to bring your own!

9.       You can actually talk down $40 to $9 in a mall – bargaining to a quarter to a fifth of the price is expected.

10.   Tired of feeling youthful? Half the population of all of Cambodia is under the age of 20, and 70% are under 30.

11.   Ants invade everything within minutes, even dried packaged noodles and canned items…aaahhhh!!! You will develop red ant paranoia…but hey, having the kitchen all to yourself is no fun anyway.

12.   Off-brand windex kills ants (hooray!!).

13.   Scratch that…off-brand windex kills ants for an hour.

14.   Raid kills ants for 6 hours.

15.   Ants are immortal.

16.   Instant roommates! Mice will move into your broken clothes washer.

17.   In the mornings, monks go around barefoot in bright orange robes with little umbrellas and homemade baskets, asking for food donations (they can only eat before 11am) in exchange for prayers. So hey, you’ve got that goin for you.

18.   Bored? There are weddings all over the place. If you’re really bored, you can get up at 3am when the ceremonies and rituals start. It’s a long day…so to keep their guests entertained, the bride and groom change outfits about every hour (do the math – from 3am til midnight means a ton of clothes!). A “poor” family will have seven outfits, minimum.

19.   Looking for a free workout class? Drive to the center of town, where you can join tens of men and women doing step aerobics on a sidewalk facing the middle of a busy traffic center.

84 degrees at 6:30 am (and it only gets hotter from here…)

Ah, Cambodia: the land of smiles, humidity, the Khmers, Watt temples, and (ah, yes) the Lexus.

And man is it hot.

Thankfully, I’m in a two-bedroom apartment that’s just downstairs of Katherine, my “host UMC missionary,” which has a fan in most of the rooms and a small AC unit in my bedroom that works beautifully (my saving grace!). I’m living in the apartment by myself for the time being, but I hope that I’ll get to have a suitemate soon. The apartment complex in our neighborhood is four stories tall and connected on the third floor to the neighboring apartment by an outdoor balcony, so I basically have Katherine as my upstairs housemate and easy access to my neighbors, which is infinitely better than living all by myself. I live in the bottom two stories of one apartment, Katherine lives in the upper two stories, Anita and Angela (ex-pat professors who teach Khmer/English to highly vulnerable girls) live next door to Katherine, and Heng (my sweet Cambodian landlady who recently became a Christian) and her many nephews live under them. To keep ourselves centered and to give Heng daily opportunities to learn about the Bible and Jesus, we all get together at Anita and Angela’s place for devotions in the morning before work and sometimes vespers (evening devotions) at night. We’re the only ex-pats on our street, which is awesome, because there are always tons of little Cambodian kids running around shouting “Hello! Hello!” morning, noon, and night. No annoying roosters waking me up at 3am, though…God must have heard my prayers. :)

So despite my fans and even moderate air-conditioning at the office, I’m still experiencing these lovely hot-flashes, major fatigue, and headaches. I’m hoping I’m just getting used to the weather and have prolonged jet-lag, but there’s a pretty high possibility that I’m allergic to MSG…which happens to be in everything local and that I don’t prepare myself, unfortunately. So I’m being careful over the next few days to see if I see much of a difference. I’m just glad I don’t have to make myself sick from taking malaria medication!

The heat and MSG aside, I really think this internship is going to be amazing. I work closely with the CHAD (Community Health and Agriculture Development) team who focuses on providing health care access, agricultural training, water purification techniques, and microfinance loans to communities in Phnom Penh and out in the province (Cambodia’s version of the Zambian “bush” or Peruvian “jungle”). There are only seven of them: Katherine (my “host missionary” from California), Vannak (23-year-old Cambodian office assistant), Daneth (Cambodia), Sophal (Cambodia), Mr. Thy (Cambodia), Mr. Ken (Cambodia), and Mamí Irene (Zimbabwe). I can understand Katherine and Mamí perfectly, but I’m having serious difficulties understanding the Khmer (“Kah-my”) accent. Apparently, in Khmer, the subject is often dropped and the verb is always unconjugated but hierarchical (you use a different verb for when a child eats, a monk eats, a king eats, a woman eats, a man eats, women or men eat…the list goes on and on). Once I figured that much out, it’s a bit easier to understand native Cambodians. Still, it’s kind of like interpreting “jungle Spanish” in Peru…I’m hopeless! Since a bunch of my time is going to be spent communicating, I’m praying for the gift of tongues or interpretation or something. Kidding (well, sort of). :)

The rest of the GBGM team at the office are working with the Methodist Women’s division, Street Kids (outreach to educate and improve the standard of life for kids in Phnom Penh), and other programs are from all over – Helen, our financial girl, is from the Philippines; Esther, the volunteer coordinator, is from Kenya; Marilyn and Joseph are survivors of the Khmer Rouge and lived in the US for 20 years before they returned to Cambodia to be missionaries in their home country…the list goes on and on. Such cool people! I’m so incredibly blessed to be able to work with them so closely this summer!

In other news, I’m going to be going to a taize service this afternoon after work (kind of contemplation meets meditation for an hour or so…I think? We’ll see how it goes!) and I’m invited to an all-day wedding this Sunday. Cambodian weddings are supposed to be nuts with all these cool rituals and fun dances, so I’m so excited! :)

So many hugs and besos, and more updates (and pics - see the tab up there that says "cambodia pictures!") to come!

Blessings,

Stephanie

PS - You know you’re settling into Cambodia when...

13. The water is shut off in your apartment for a day and a half…oh wait, no, the little kids outside were just playing around and turned the valve to divert the water flow.

14.  Mangoes are as popular as rice.

15. Beans are for dessert. Sorry, I still can’t get over that…!

16. You’re served cold tea when you sit down at a restaurant instead of iced water. The water you’re gonna pay for.

17. You start to think “TIC, TIC, TIC” (“This is Cambodia”) on a regular basis.

18. All your food is crammed into your mini-fridge because the ants will get to it otherwise.

19. MSG is in eeeeverything. They like the flavor (!?!).

20. A mouse joins you in your morning shower. Glorious.