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.'

I was nervous about moving to Phnom Penh, scared to be on my own without the love, support, and encouragement of living with a host family. And, while I’m still saddened to be so far from my Svay Rieng family, I’m finding that I’ll also have a family here in my landlord and fellow tenants.

My landlord, 79 years old and a former professor turned entrepreneur, is fulfilling a grandfather-esque roll for me in his repeated warnings to always double check my locks and never to travel with my passport. He and his wife are keeping me supplied with gifts of fruit.

My downstairs neighbor saw me taking my clothes to the laundromat around the corner and struck up a conversation about why I wasn’t washing my clothes myself. We talked about my work and travel schedule and how I haven’t had the needed free time to wash my things by hand, even though that’s what I prefer. Later that week she stopped me on my way upstairs to tell me to come to her with my laundry this weekend; she has a washing machine she wants me to use.

Her husband, who was visiting from another province where he watches the land while his wife watches the children in Phnom Penh, has spent a couple hours chatting with me in Khmer, being patient with my gaps in language knowledge. We’ve discussed Syria, economics, unemployment, Detroit, and Rwanda. He’s also told me his Khmer Rouge story. And, after asking where I’m from in the States, he looked it up on a map and we discussed the geography of my state, the surrounding states, and their proximity to Toronto, where he has family. He says he’d love to have me join their family trip to Bokor Mountain in a few months.

And then there’s Leak, the tailor on the ground floor, who is always there with a warm smile and friendly comment with her precocious daughter who reminds me so much of my niece Neath.

At the beginning of my third year in Cambodia through the Peace Corps, I am constantly grateful for the people whom I’ve met and the relationships we’ve formed together. I feel incredibly blessed to have had not just one amazing host family here but now this new ‘family’ as well.

Today I made my way to Svay Rieng, taking a very familiar path for the first time in two months. This time, though, I had a unique insight via the only other foreigner (a Chinese man making his way to Vietnam) in the van. Through his experience, his eyes, I was able to project how far I’ve come in this country in the past two years. I think it’s a testament to how much the human body and spirit can adjust.

He was irritated by the wait time at the market and bewildered by the imprecise answers to ‘How much longer?’ ‘When we have enough customers’ was an impractical and indefinite as a structure for business. The stop at the bakery absolutely confounded him. That the ride should be a leisurely pursuit and not an efficient rush was bothersome. He gazed through the windows at Neak Loeung with awe, pity, and disgust at the conditions, beggars, and brazenness of the sellers. And all of this he had to do without communicating with the driver or other passengers (myself excepted since he had some English ability).

I sort of miss experiencing everything so freshly and so internally. I miss the challenge of throwing everything against my Western paradigms, trying to bring my expectations crashing down. I know there are still those walls, but they don’t seem so high, so insurmountable anymore.

I’ve been back in Cambodia 8 days and in my new apartment for 3. Just as when I went back to visit the States, the readjustment was quite smooth. Reverse Culture Shock seems to have been too busy to bother with me.

Tonight, though, I had my first bad day in a while, and I was surprised by how I longed for the comforts of the West to be my reprieve. I left work thoroughly exhausted, not having quite conquered jet lag and having sat in front of a computer for 10 hours. I left in what had appeared to be the tail end of a monsoon-season storm. I was fooled.

I arrived at my apartment, soaked and shivering, and had to drudge patiently through the 4 different locked gates to get inside. Those proverbial ‘little things,’ the molehills of everyday annoyance, were magnified. I found myself inwardly cursing the traffic, the weather, and whoever has permanently parked their motorbike in the tiny alleyway to my stairs. I then proceeded to lose my keys for 30 minutes (they were still in the exterior lock) and cut myself on a can of pasta sauce.

All I wanted was to dry off, wrap myself in my comforter, and indulge in hot chocolate and a ready-to-eat meal. But my sarang inevitably always has ants in it, my comforter is back in the States leaving me with the blanket that came with the apartment, and meals are made from scratch and clean up must be immediate. Thankfully, I was at least able to hit 1 out of 4 with some hot chocolate packets I had shoved into my suitcase as an afterthought.

Post-shower, post-dinner, and post-calming down, I started to consider my situation. While in the States, I had longed to be back in Cambodia, so why is my inward reaction to stress to desire to be in the States? Or at least to have the comforts of the States? So I’m working on it. These types of associations die hard. Slowly but surely, I’m working on challenging and changing what I deem a comfort or reward activity. Instead of ice cream, why not a tuk-a-luk from the corner vendor; instead of a burger, why not Cow Climbs the Mountain or ban-chaio; instead of escaping into a couch, why not escaping to the countryside?

The Day's Reflection - 22 April 2013

Today I’m waiting for the doctor to call. When he swung by my house on Friday, he told me that he’d stop by again on Monday and that maybe I’d get my stitches out and be cleared to ride my bike. Well, today is Monday. But I don’t know what time he’ll come. Or if it’ll be just another quick cleaning at my house. Or if he’ll take me to town to the clinic. Or maybe he won’t call and won’t come. I don’t know.

If I were in the States, this waiting and the unknown would bother me. Here, though, I’m too ashamed to even consider being bothered. 

First, the doctor has done everything for me for free: xray, debridement, stitches, antibiotic, a ride to my house, and a house call. He says that because I am a volunteer who has come to help his country, he wants to do something to help me. I have failed in my attempts to express how grateful I am to him. 

I recognize what a privilege I have being an American right now. I have the privilege of being able to follow through with the doctor’s orders to rest and not have to work to live. I have the privilege of the extra care my family is giving me since they recognize I am out of my element. I have the privilege of special care from the medical staff (being bumped to the front of the line ahead of people in much worse condition than me, being given a ride home from the clinic, being provided home visits, etc). 

But, mostly, being sick and/or hurt while living with survivors of genocide is drastically perspective shifting. Keeping my barely-injured knee elevated while my mother tells stories of life in the Khmer Rouge and my father stretches out his leg scarred from the war…well, I can’t really express what that does to one’s paradigm of pain and health and life moving on.

Excerpt from My Volunteer Reporting Form

The question: What challenges have you faced in your project or in other areas of your Peace Corps experience?

This year has been particularly challenging. I’ve struggled with the work at the school (teaching as well as other projects), with my relationships with HCNs, and with personal anxiety.

Coteaching relationships are hard enough, but they’re made harder when sites are selected based on which schools are willing to take us and not on which schools want us for specific purposes. My school and counterparts seem to view me as an interesting addition, someone to take part of their work load and be a beneficial line on their CVs. They want me to teach when they don’t want to come, grade the tests so they don’t have to, and give them interesting anecdotes to share about working with the foreigner girl. (I do have good relationships with several teachers at the school and there are many positive experiences there, but I want to emphasize here some the negatives and how those difficulties have been affecting me.) No one has interest in extra work; no one wants to prepare outside resources, to meet with me outside of class to develop lesson plans, to change their teaching habits in the long term. We both show up each day and follow the EFC by rote. And a lot of that is my fault. I’m not good at confrontation, at pointing out flaws. And I’m too easily paralyzed by the extent of interwoven problems in the Cambodian education system. I find respite in the class I teach alone; it’s in that environment that I can try new things and treat the students differently from the norm. Those are the students who are learning and improving and excited to come to class. So I’ve taken those ideas and methods and tried to implement them in my other classes and show them to my coteachers. They aren’t taken. Either the teachers aren’t interested enough to spend the time to understand my idea or they don’t care enough to implement it when I’m not in the class. I feel like any changes in behavior are meant solely to appease me.

I’m also struggling with the director and the school system in general. Yesterday I sat down with the director to discuss how we could apply for a grant to improve the reading room. He wanted to tell me what the project required and leave it at that. I tried to explain the plethora of details that went into the proposal, but he wasn’t interested in that sort of preparation work. He showed me a number, saying ‘This is the amount we need to do the project. I don’t care how you do the proposal, just get this amount.’ This reaction harkens back to the mini-IST we had in which our directors and counterparts participated and we had time for us to discuss action plans for our service. Every idea proposed by my director involved the receipt of funds from my ‘rich’ American friends and family. He even wanted me to build a road. I don’t know how to be here under a teaching framework when it’s not my teaching that the school wants from me. I’m not fulfilling anyone’s expectations for my time here, not even my own.

Ever since reading Somaly Mam’s The Road of Lost Innocence, I’ve been really struggling with some aspects of life and culture here. I don’t know how to act around teachers who coyly admit to frequenting karaoke bars for the wonderful ‘service’ and ‘company.’ I don’t know how to act around my director who regularly participates in the culture of bribery. I don’t know how to act around my brother-in-law who frequently drinks until he vomits the entirety of the following morning. I don’t know how to act around my male family members who think that married men are still entitled to be with multiple women. I don’t know what to do when I see a man taking advantage of a drunken girl and the response is that she shouldn’t have been drinking around men. I feel lost here. I feel like I’m sitting on the sidelines and observing tragedy.

A lot of the above have been contributing to feelings of helplessness and powerlessness that have been overwhelming me lately. As much as I love my host family and how they care for me, I have no control or responsibility for my own life. I don’t go to the market, cook, or clean. Every aspect of my day is prepared for me. I’m an extremely overgrown child. Since I don’t have control over the society I’m in, I need to find a way to take some control over myself.

I’ve started contemplating action plans to begin to approach proactively some of these challenges, so I hope things will begin to change and that I’ll feel more at ease soon.

(posted March 21, 2013)

Khmer Conversation #6

Visitor: Hey.... Did you know there's a foreigner in your kitchen??

(posted October 10, 2012)