I Miss Your Face like Hell

In July I mark my seventh year of having lived in Cambodia, and I find myself looking back on this journey and the people who have been with me along the road of my life so far.

A year from now we'll all be gone
All our friends will move away
And they're going to better places
But our friends will be gone away

I received my invitation to Peace Corps Cambodia the day I graduated from college. Already I was at a crossroads in my life, with friends graduating and moving and considering my own next home, knowing only that it would not be back in Indiana. A few weeks before my flight, Jessie, Steph, and I attended a concert in Millennium Park where I first heard The Head and The Heart play Rivers and Roads. The refrain echoed on and on with tears welling in my eyes, standing next to two amazing people and thinking of all the others in my life and how we were spreading not just across the nation but across the world…. Rivers and roads….rivers and roads till I reach you….

Sitting alone in OHare and waiting for my flight, I put that same song on repeat as I read through letters from friends filled with words of love and well-wishing and the promises not to drift apart. Life is not static, though, and goodbyes are inevitable. With hope and hard work those goodbyes are not eternal, but, even when they are, the people on our journeys are an integral part of shaping the path ahead of us. Sometimes our paths converge again, and I rejoice when they do, but I know that my loved ones have their own paths to follow to their own better places. And this is the path I must take.

Nothing is as it has been
And I miss your face like Hell
And I guess it's just as well
But I miss your face like Hell

You all are living your own best lives, and I am so proud and in awe of each and every one of you: whether raising the next generation of fabulous individuals, serving in your dream job, and/or still figuring yourself and your path out. Whether you know it or not – whether you intend to or not - all of you are changing the world around you for the better. With the world seeming to crumble around us, my heart is lightened being reminded of those of you in my life and knowing that goodness and love prevails in people.

It is just as well. But, god, I miss your face like hell.

Been talking 'bout the way things change
And my family lives in a different state
And if you don't know what to make of this
Then we will not relate
So if you don't know what to make of this
Then we will not relate

While I was preparing to leave for what should have been just two years of service with Peace Corps, my mom commented that she felt like she was saying goodbye forever and that I would not return.

I know you sometimes feel I abandoned you – sometimes I feel that way myself – but please know that I left a piece of my heart with you and there it will remain.

Rivers and roads can create a chasm of loneliness. Whether it’s remembering those on the path behind us or saying goodbye to someone taking a different fork ahead of us, whether that person is family or friend, distance is a tangible ache.

Rivers and roads
Rivers and roads
Rivers 'til I reach you

But over rivers and roads, I’m also converging paths with new people. Even more, I’m learning to love and learn across the rivers and roads of culture and language and I hope creating a bridge for others to do the same.

We cannot explore new roads without first leaving our current ones and crossing those rivers to new adventures and new people to know and to love.

Rivers and roads
Oh rivers and roads
Oh rivers 'til I reach you

I’ve been so privileged to live in a world where rivers and roads are not eternal barriers as technology connects us all. I’m sorry to everyone with whom I have not maintained a strong enough bridge through time and space. Know that you are missed.

Rivers and roads
Rivers and roads
Rivers 'til I reach you

What I Learned from Peace Corps:

How to Communicate

For the past five years, I’ve been living in a constant state of miscommunication. 

I never realized how much my own self was defined by language until it was gone. For the past two years, only a tiny percentage of my daily communication has been with native English speakers. And of those, the majority are Australian or British, while I myself am American. Bit by bit, over these past two years, I’ve watched as pieces of myself have floated away: My vocabulary. My grammar. My sarcasm. My pop culture references.

I have always loved language: Structure. Order. Persuasion. Beauty. Language makes us as much as we make it. When you look to the roots of language, you can find how inextricably tied it is to the culture surrounding it. Both constantly evolve as either takes on newness. 

Coming from the Midwest, I stereotypically had had minimal exposure to other languages, so when I joined Peace Corps Cambodia in 2011, I was in for quite a shock. At my going-away toast at the end of my service (more like a roast…thanks, guys), one of the Program Managers remarked that when he first met me, I spoke so quickly that he doubted I’d ever be understood by a Cambodian English-learner.  

Two years into my service, I had this to say about language and communication:

The way you communicate will completely transform. Learning a language from scratch through immersion is a powerful experience. You will learn to have complex communications though expressions, gestures, and basic vocabulary. You will learn to bond with another human being through silence. You will answer the same basic questions over and over and over again. You may never achieve the ability to discuss ideas and concepts. You will develop a new English language which consists of pared down vocabulary and grammatical structures. You will actively think of each word before you speak. Your speech patterns will slow. You will have to define words whose meanings you had always taken for granted. You will learn to listen. 

Thinking About Peace Corps?

Now, approaching my 5th anniversary in Cambodia, having moved from Peace Corps Volunteer to senior management at an education NGO and having progressed from a Cambodian boyfriend to a Cambodian fiancé, I have a few things to add.

I miss being eloquent. I miss seeming intelligent (or simply not stupid). I miss being understood.

I’m actually quite functional in Khmer by this point. I can speak, read, write and type (a fact that actually saddens me as many Cambodians are themselves not given the opportunity to achieve that). But the intricacies still elude me, and even the way I speak Khmer is still impacted by my American-ness. In Khmer, I still use the word ‘sorry’ with the frequency that only an American could, and I struggle to adapt to the lengthy language of appropriateness and politeness in formal Khmer situations.

When I was still a Peace Corps Volunteer, these miscommunications and lack of understanding were bearable and, most of the time, amusing. I still chuckle at the time I told an elderly woman that her son had ‘f@*ked’ me a lot as opposed to ‘helped’ (two such opposing words should never be allowed to have such similar sounds….). And, before, when I was the only English speaker at an event and got lost in the conversation, I could just tune out and play Snake on my little Nokia. 

In my current position, though, a lot rides on my understanding and being understood. This level of responsibility highlights my language failures every day. When a little kid mocks my accent, it’s no longer obnoxious. It’s painful. When I walk out of a meeting thinking we’d reached consenus only to find the opposite playing out, I ache at my failure. Just learning more vocabulary is not enough because communication is much more than mere words. It’s also patterns and culture. To be eloquent in Khmer is a level which I fear I can never achieve. 

To try to counter this, I’ve worked to adapt to find the bare-bottom necessities of communication. In both English and Khmer, I pare down words as well as abandon elegance and subtlety in order to be understood. Those parts of myself, though, I miss every day. I miss the power I used to feel from my command of a language.

In the midst of self-pitying, I must remember that this is a two-way street. I respect that everyone who communicates with me - either in Khmer or English - is also sacrificing a part of their selves to try to find common ground with me. I look to my amazing host mother who told me of her family’s experience under the Khmer Rouge via charades; she sacrificed the pain and emotion and importance of her language so that I could understand. I look to my fiancé who lives our relationship in a language that is not his own so that we can grow together.

Beyond mere miscommunication, I’m increasingly frustrated by finding how closely our opinions of others are correlated to their ability to communicate in our preferred language. When someone cannot understand us, it’s easy to write them off, to assume it’s the concept they can’t understand as opposed to the words. In my experience, I’ve found this to go both ways. I’ve heard foreigners mock Cambodian waitstaff for not catching the request from the customer. I’ve also been on the receiving end of these assumptions of incompetence, and I’ve had to resist to urge to respond as Sofia Vergara inModern Family: 

I’m working daily to remember this tendency to patronize based on language abilities and to recall when talking to others to dumb down only the language and never the ideas. I must look back to my early days in Peace Corps when learning Khmer was a pipe dream and recall that I could achieve understanding with someone through silence. While I may miss English full and bountiful in its boldness and abstractness, words are not the end-all, be-all of communication. Where words may fail, communication is supplemented by action and mutual kindness.  While not foregoing the need to continue my Khmer studies, I need to abandon my fetish with words (sorry, English teachers….).

Ultimately, it’s my responsibility when I feel misunderstood as I did not employ my full arsenal of communication. I must look back to my host mom who would daily work around words to help me understand. I must look back to my own words from three years ago and remember all of the complex conversations that I have had through ‘expressions, gestures, and basic vocabulary.’

I’m not being misunderstood. I am miscommunicating. 

Batteries

As the K8s are about to arrive and join Peace Corps Cambodia, we've begun the Training of Trainers for our Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitators. In preparing one of my sessions, I came across this Peace Corps story in the book Culture Matters; this story, it seems to me, embodies the beauty and potential of Peace Corps' goals of cultural exchange and relationship building:

I hadn't timed it right. The village I had to get to was still an hour away when night fell. Walking in the dark was a nuisance; also, it had been raining since early afternoon. Worst of all, as I leaned against the wall of the chauntara and felt the blessed release from the weight of my backpack, I discovered my flashlight batteries were dead. The hour ahead was shaping up poorly.

As I stood there in the rain, my glasses fogged, drinking from my water bottle, an old woman came around the bend, bent over under a stack of firewood. She headed for the chauntara, her eyes down, and nearly walked into me, looking up suddenly when she saw my feet. 'Namaste,' she said, shifting her load onto the wall. 'Kaha jaane?'
'To the village,' I said.
'Tonight? It's dark and your shirt is wet.' Then, more urgently, 'You're the American, aren't you?
'My son is in America,' she said. She didn't look like the type whose son would be in America. 'He joined the army, the Gurkhas, and they sent him there for training. Three months ago. He's a country boy. I worry. You need some tea before you go on.'
After ten minutes, we were at her small house beside the trail. She doffed the firewood and turned to me, 'Take off your shirt.' I looked surprised. 'I'll dry it by the fire in the kitchen. Put on this blanket.'
A few minutes later she came out of the kitchen with two mugs of tea, swept a hapless chicken off the table, and pulled up a bench for me. The tea worked wonders, bringing back my courage for the walk ahead. She offered me food, too, but I declined, explaining that I didn't want to be on the trail too late at night. 'It's OK,' she said. 'You have a flashlight.'
She fetched my shirt. I put it on, revived by the warmth against my skin, and went outside to hoist my pack. I turned to thank her. 'Switch on your flashlight,' she told me.

'The batteries are dead.' She went inside and came back with two batteries, a considerable gift for someone of her means.
'I couldn't,' I said. 'Besides, I know the trail.'
'Take them.' She smiled, showing great gaps where teeth had once been.
'You've been very kind to me,' I said.
'My son is in America,' she said. 'Some day, on the trail, he will be cold and wet. Maybe a mother in your land will help him.'

Check it Out!

Conclusion of Hun Sen Prosaut Water Project

The water tank is finally finished! Thanks to Jessie, Alex, Pryce, Tom and Sally, Jon and Susie, Barbara, and Coleen!

I Was in a Khmer Play!

Over Khmer New Year, I went up to Battambang to help out with Sambath and Sambon's program with Countryside Class. As part of the 3 nights of entertainment they put on at Kampongseyma Pagoda, the kids worked together to write and act out a play, which they generously invited me to take part in. So here's 'I was in a Khmer play!' (part 1).

Victory!

Over Khmer New Year, Countryside Class worked with World Vision to put on three nights of entertainment at Kampongseyma Pagoda in Battambang Province. Part of the festivities were traditional games, which I got to take part in on the final night. You’re allowed only three swings, so Sambath says I cheated; I maintain, however, that I was merely seeking with a wide sweep and succeeded on my third hit.

Peace Corps Cambodia's Website Launches!

One of my main responsibilities as Peace Corps Volunteer Leader in Cambodia has been to manage the creation of Peace Corps Cambodia’s social media presence. As part of Peace Corps’ new recruitment initiative of allowing recruits more choice in where they want to serve, each post has been tasked with creating a post-specific website to highlight the unique work that Volunteer do in that country.

After months of work alongside of Peace Corps Cambodia staff, our website has finally gone live! On our site you can read about Cambodia, our programs, donate to projects, and read blog posts and other stories of Peace Corps Cambodia Volunteers in action.

Alongside this website, we’ve also created a youtube channel and facebook page.

Please take some time to check out these new sites and read about what makes Peace Corps Cambodia so special.