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. 

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?

Thinking of Joining the Peace Corps??

Dear Person Contemplating Joining Peace Corps,

I imagine that you’re at a transition point in your life. Perhaps you’ve just graduated, perhaps you’re going through a career change, perhaps you have an itch for something more that can’t be scratched. Whatever the reason, here you are: contemplating joining Peace Corps.

But should you? Is it right for you?

Honestly, you might not know that until you’ve arrived. You can research by reading books and official publications or by talking with current/returned volunteers, but everything you read and hear will probably tell you the same thing: every person’s experience is different. Your Peace Corps life will be uniquely shaped by your country, program, and site. 

I’d like to think, though, that there are a few things that are universal throughout the Peace Corps world, and those things tend all to revolve around how you yourself will change - for the better and for the worse - because of your time in Peace Corps.*

On Tuesdays I get to teach my favorite class: 10A. It’s the only class that I get to teach regularly without a co-teacher, so I’m able to do weird things with the students and have a completely casual relationship with them without having to worry about my co-teaching relationship. 

Today, we studied prepositions of place: in, on, above, below, beside, outside, between. As usual, I gave them visual representations of each preposition on the chalkboard and then worked with them to produce the proper Khmer translation. To reinforce the lesson, we played a game (an EXTREMELY rare occurrence in Cambodian classrooms) akin to follow the leader. They simply had to follow my command, which included a preposition of place. (Put your pen above your head. Put your book under your desk. Put your shoe beside your desk.) They were starting to catch on, so I yelled, ‘Stand outside the classroom!’ and made a beeline for the door. I stood outside and glanced in, noticing that they were all still seated and glancing at each other nervously. I popped my head inside and repeated the command. I watched as the first student understood and a smile broke out and he sprinted to the door, closely followed by the others. After I sent them back inside, the bell rang for the break time.

Normally, breaks are spent with me at the desk, writing in the class book or studying Khmer. Today, the students had another idea. Some of them had lyrics from their private class, and they pleasantly demanded that I sing them. So I belted out Take Me to Your Heart, followed by Oun Sarang Bong. Feeling a bit parched, I walked out to pick up a water bottle from the nearest stall. On the way back, I passed one of my other grade 10 classes who were currently on break with one of my coteachers. They called me inside for a brief chat, and I noticed from the chalkboard that they were also studying the preposition lesson. I knew this, because those same diagrams that I use to teach that lesson, that I had used in class with this coteacher the previous week, were on the board. For perhaps the first time, I felt as if my being here and working with these teachers might make some sort of difference – one infinitesimally small – but difference all the same.

After the break, I finished the book’s lesson with about twenty minutes to spare, so I decided to indulge in a cultural exchange moment and teach them about the upcoming Thanksgiving celebrations all across the United States. I explained how it was one of our major holidays, that we met with the majority of our extended family, and that we ate till we were full then rested and then ate more. I taught them the form, ‘This year I am thankful for…’ and called on a few students to tell me what they are thankful for this year. They all said, ‘This year I am thankful for my teacher.’ (I’d be more flattered if there weren’t such a culture of copying answers here.) I asked if they have a holiday similar to Thanksgiving in Cambodia. They don’t. I asked when they tell their families what they’re thankful for. Never. So their homework was to go home and tell their families what happened this year to make them thankful. I really hope this is one assignment they actually do…

(posted November 25, 2012)

Khmer Conversation #6

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

(posted October 10, 2012)