Author: trotters41

An American at a Khmer Wedding (Part 1: A Trip or Two to the Seamstress)

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— by Elizabeth

The seamstress on my street does my mending, and each time I am happy with the quality of her work (and with her exceptionally low prices). While she speaks no English at all, she does speak her own language rather rapidly.

I’d been admiring the purple dress (my favorite color!) in her window for weeks but didn’t have the courage to ask about it. Asking about it would expose my ridiculous lack of Khmer language. But there was a wedding coming up, and I wanted something more formal than what I owned.  So three days before the wedding (can you tell I brought my whole self, including the procrastinating part, to Cambodia??), off I marched to the sewing shop. And this is how it happened:

I tell the seamstress I like the dress. I stand there next to it, unable to think of the word for “wear.” Because of course I want to wear it before buying it. Oh why didn’t I study first? That’s what Jonathan does before he attempts something new.  I have a limited Khmer vocabulary, and only the most used portions come to the front of my brain during a conversation. Words I don’t use much — like words about clothing — stay way in the back. Think think think. What is the word for wear?? The only thing I can think of is the word for clothes. I stand there unproductively, actually waving my hand in circles as if it could help me. She talks at me while I think. I have no idea what she is saying. Then poof! The word I need comes to me.

I tell her I want to wear that dress. I tell her, if I like the dress, I will buy it. She looks a bit confused, but she teaches me the word for “to try on.” I stand and think some more. Suddenly I know what to say: “I want to try it on now.” The light goes on, and she pulls the dress off the mannequin. I have found the Magic Key. (Magic Keys are an essential part of my life. The Magic Key asks a question that forces the hearer to answer me using words I already know. Or, as in this case, the Key asks someone to do the very thing I want them to do.)

I try it on, and it fits (hooray!). But the back shows too much skin, so I tell her I don’t usually show my back, because I am “shy.” (That’s the only way I know to explain my desire for more coverage.) She teaches me another new word, which literally means “skin for enclosing.”  She’ll basically make a wrap to cover my back and shoulders.

Then it’s time to hem the bottom. I don’t have my dress shoes with me. (Um, again, why did I not think to bring them?? I am so unprepared.) I’m not sure how much she should cut off, so I ask for her advice. She doesn’t seem to understand that I want her help in deciding the length. So I ask her to make it the normal length for dresses. Again, her face registers no understanding. I stand there, think think thinking again, about how to do this hemline. (Have you noticed yet that I do a lot of standing around and thinking??)  At one point she even tells me I should have my husband come (she knows he’s a better speaker than I am).

Finally I tell her, cut just a little bit. She seems to understand that. (Magic Key alert!)

But when I go to pick it up later, it’s not ready. She seems to be concerned that the dress and wrap materials are not exactly the same color, so she hasn’t sewed the wrap yet. At first glance, they look exactly the same to me. But as I examine them closer, I notice a slight difference. She is very concerned, so I start wondering if the slight color difference is a big deal to Khmer people and will I show up to the wedding looking extremely inappropriate?? (Insert internal freak out moment right here.) I stand there. Thinking. Asking myself what to do, as if I could possibly help myself. All this time she is talking at me again, and I understand nothing. Finally I say, sort of questioningly, “they’re close to the same color.” She agrees, “yes, a little bit different color.” I ask her if that’s good.  She says yes. (There’s that Magic Key again. Because let’s face it, all I really care about is covering up that back.)

In the end, I’m very happy with my new dress and wrap. And I’m very happy with my seamstress.satnight (2)

In Search of Christmas Spirit (or, an ode to Christmases past and present)

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— by Elizabeth

I remember seemingly endless 8 hour drives in the snow from my home in South Dakota to Grandpa and Grandma’s home in Iowa. I remember being stuffed into a house with 30 other cousins and aunts and uncles and stuffing myself with hoska and rolickies and kolaches (Czech pastries my grandma would make).

I remember my mom’s sugar cookies and butter cookies and thumbprint cookies.  I remember staying up late and eating popcorn and watching It’s a Wonderful Life with my parents and my sisters. I remember being fascinated by our German candle pyramid.

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And I remember “that one Christmas,” when money was so tight that we weren’t going to get any presents, and how it didn’t matter to us anyway, but someone gave us money on Christmas Eve, and how totally surprised we were the next day.

Jonathan and I developed our own family Christmas traditions since we married 12 years ago. We would go to a Christmas tree farm, find a tree that was invariably too large for our miniature apartment, cut it down, and crunch it into our microscopic Geo Prism. String it with lights and childhood ornaments while Amy Grant’s Home for Christmas album played in the background. Watch the Muppet’s Christmas Carol with friends and White Christmas with family. I would make those peanut-butter-ritz-sandwich-cookies-dipped-in-chocolate (what are those things called anyway??).

We continued our traditions (and adopted new ones) when we moved back to Kansas City. More kids were being born all the time, and we would include them in the cookie-baking, fire-making, tree-picking processes.  Every December Jonathan and I would go to Skies restaurant at the top of the Hyatt and eat Sky High Pie – their famous three layer ice cream pie. We would remember our year and dream about the next one. We would drive our family around the city and admire the Christmas lights on Ward Parkway. We would go to Crown Center and absolutely freeze while our children played underneath that enormous Christmas tree outside.

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Cambodia has no cultural cues that it’s time to celebrate Christmas. Life goes on much the same as it has all year. No cold weather. No Christmas lights, no music, just more of the same wedding and funeral tents blocking traffic. No crazy shoppers. (Or perhaps the shoppers are as crazy as they have been all year??)

We had planned to spend Thanksgiving with some other Team Expansion missionaries, but the week before Thanksgiving, our kids got sick with Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease. It’s highly contagious, and we needed to stay at home until all our children had caught it and recovered from it. (This means we were quarantined at home for a full 2 weeks, by the way.) So instead of spending Thanksgiving with our friends, we were alone — and lonely. Our friends delivered some Thanksgiving food. I didn’t feel very festive. I didn’t even want to celebrate Christmas if it were going to be different from Christmas in America.

We hadn’t brought our ornaments from the States because of lack of space in suitcases in January. I didn’t want a tree if I couldn’t have my own precious ornaments (reminiscent of a toddler temper tantrum). Then I watched a Christmas movie and read a Christmas book (both modeled after the classic A Christmas Carol story). And then some family visited us at the last minute, bringing some of our ornaments with them, and giving us the motivation to buy an artificial tree.

Later that week I watched Isaac’s Christmas play at church. I listened to these songs being performed by children from all over the world. In the middle of one of the songs it hit me: I can celebrate Christmas in Cambodia — because I’m with others who celebrate the Christ Child.

And I cried.

(Of course.)

We sang all my favorite carols at church that day, from Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel, and Joy to the World, to Oh Holy Night and What Child is This? I felt like I had come home.

We’re going to keep old traditions in Cambodia. We’ll still watch Christmas movies (most likely with the  air conditioning cranked up). We’ll still decorate a tree and listen to Christmas music. We’ll still read the Gospel according to Luke.  But we’re going to make new traditions in Cambodia too. We’ll probably always sing, along with the Bronx-accented camels in Isaac’s play, “I walked so far now my hooves.have.corns” and remember that time when Isaac was singing it in the shower and we were listening and Jonathan wanted to surprise him at the “corns” part but when he opened the door, Isaac was so scared he fell on his backside onto the bathroom tile. (Ouch!) We’ll dance to Straight No Chaser’s 12 Days of Christmas on our tiled living room floor. We’ll joke about how “we spent Christmas down in Asia” instead of the song’s “I spent Christmas down in Africa.”

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And we’ll celebrate this Christmas with dear friends.  As long as we don’t get sick again (and feel free to pray for that), we’re looking forward to eating a Christmas meal with two other families here in Phnom Penh — friends who have become dearer to me in my first year in Asia than I could ever have imagined.

How Not to be Kidnapped in the Global South

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— by Elizabeth

 

1. Call your trustworthy tuk tuk driver when it’s time to run errands.

2. If he’s not available, accept the replacement he sends.

3. Bring your daughter along with you.

4. Begin to worry when he takes an unplanned detour into a gas station yet skips past the pumps. (Think: He didn’t mention anything about this. Remember you have your 4 year old with you. Is he meeting someone here to exchange drugs? Are you going to be kidnapped? Held at gunpoint? Robbed? Should you call your husband, so he knows exactly where and when you were last located?)

5. You notice he seems to be heading toward the compressed air.  That must be what he needs. No, he passes it, turns around, and gets back on the main street. Breathe.

6. Don’t freak out when he turns into another gas station, gets out, and walks away.

7. Do not panic when you start rolling backwards toward the busy street because he forgot to put on the brake. Look around calmly. Try to judge the point at which you and your daughter will need to jump out.

8. You can relax again when he turns back, apologizes, and uses the brake to prevent any further rolling.

9. Watch him go directly to the public bathroom and return 5 minutes later, presumably from Montezuma’s Revenge, Delhi Belly, or some other geographical intestinal affliction.

10. Continue with your planned errands and determine to put your paranoid tendencies to death.

Mrs. Trotter’s Neighborhood

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–by Elizabeth

I love my neighborhood. I really do. Come with me, look past the trash on the streets and the smell of funky Asian food, and let me show you my neighborhood.

Every day the kids next door greet us with a “Hello Jonneeeeee!” They think that’s especially funny because Jonathan’s nickname, Johnny, is a brand of whiskey: Johnnie Walker. (No one in this country can say his name, and they can’t say Nathaniel or Faith either.)

We play outside on our street regularly. (No worries; it’s a dead-end.) Our boys ride their scooters and race up and down the street. Then they share their scooters with the neighbor boys. They play Frisbee, and sometimes the neighbor boys join in. If our regular tuk tuk driver happens to pass by and see them playing, he’ll stop and throw the Frisbee too. (He’s new to Frisbee-throwing.) And if we forget to take our frisbee with us when we go inside, the neighbors put it on our doorknob for later.

Our neighbors have a push toy for their baby. Faith is in love with this push toy. So our neighbors let her push their baby in it, and they push Faith in it too.

The neighbors also have a plastic chair that is just the right size for Faith. She’s in love with that as well. They don’t even stop her when she drags it over to our door to sit on it.

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The kids next door speak a little bit of English. Our kids speak a little bit of Khmer. And everyone knows Gangnam Style. The recipe for a budding friendship, right? Sometimes my boys play with Legos in their top-level bedroom while the neighbor kids play on the shared roof. Listening to them talk back and forth through the open window is one of my favorite things.

I just walk down the street to buy water. If I accidentally leave the money at home, it’s no big deal. I can pay the guy later. I can’t think of a place in America that would ever let me do that.

It feels like a village. (In fact, we even have a village chief — I know this because he had to sign the papers for us to rent our house.) I love my village. I love my neighborhood. And maybe you remember this song about neighborhoods:

It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?

I am glad that mine have answered with a resounding yes.

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Wherein I Offer My Deepest Apologies to Khmer Speakers Everywhere (and to Alexander Graham Bell)

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–by Elizabeth

Our family has a favorite tuk tuk driver. His name is Bun, and I dial his number every week on grocery day.

I say:  “Can you come to my house now?”

Normally he tells me yes and is at my doorstep in less than 60 seconds. This week I couldn’t understand his reply. But I don’t worry. What usually happens when I can’t understand him is that he’s unavailable and is sending a friend instead.

Would this be a good time to mention that I don’t understand Khmer very well on the telephone?

I wait at the door for his friend, but after 10 minutes, there’s no tuk tuk in sight.  I begin to wonder if he meant what I assumed he meant. I run inside to discuss my little problem with Jonathan and come back out a few minutes later, determined to wait longer.

A tuk tuk has arrived. He’s not my usual driver, but I recognize him. As I leave my house, I see that he is talking on his phone. Hmm. Perhaps he’s calling Bun to ask why I wasn’t waiting at the door for him. Oh well, he hangs up when I walk outside, and I tell him where I want to go.

Just as the tuk tuk starts driving, my phone rings. It’s Bun. Oh dear. I don’t understand Khmer very well on the phone. I answer the phone, but I’m not sure what he’s saying. Instead, I assure him: “Tuk tuk came already. Sorry. Cannot understand. Street loud.” That seems to satisfy him.

But wait a second. My driver is now going in the wrong direction. “Stop!” I tell him. He stops, turns around, says something in Khmer, and smiles. I return a blank stare. He then points to another tuk tuk driver (whom I also recognize) and says something else, still smiling. Huh? His meaning is lost on me. And he keeps driving the wrong direction.

Whatever. I know these roads. I know these drivers. I will get to Lucky Supermarket. Eventually. Both tuk tuks turn down another road, and the other driver stops at a house while my driver watches him. Then my driver turns around and goes in the right direction. He drops me off at the store, and I say: “Wait about 30 minutes.”

I shop and get in line and am just about to pay when my phone rings. I do not recognize the number, but I intuitively know it’s my driver. It has been 31 minutes. First I silence my phone. I don’t understand Khmer very well on the phone.  But he calls a second time, and this time I feel I obligated to answer. I do not know what he is saying. But I say: “Wait 3 minutes more” and hang up.

My tuk tuk is waiting for me, all smiles, when I walk out of the store. I tell him: “Sorry. Talk phone difficult me.” He smiles and nods. Would this be a good time to mention that my 6 months of language study gave me survival speaking ability only?

We learned in PILAT (Principles in Language Acquisition Techniques) that learning should be comprehension-based. In other words, we should practice hearing and understanding before we practice speaking. I have unfortunately reversed this. Sometimes when I speak in Khmer — and nearly always on the phone — I am, as my dad would say, “on transmit only,” with no possibility of receiving.

It is for this gaping hole in my conversational ability that I sincerely apologize to Khmer speakers everywhere, especially when using the telephone.