My Staff Spotlight in Peace Corps Cambodia's Weekly Update

Welcome to Staff Spotlight, where our staff will be in the limelight every week so that Volunteers and other staff have the chance to get to know about a crucial member of our team. This week we are talking to the super-friendly, high-achieving lacrosse goalie with two families: one of the PCVLs, Christin.



Christin describes herself as “a proud Hoosier from Northwest Indiana, which is actually a suburb of Chicago” (Yeah right, Christin). She traveled north for school though, and attended Albion College where she studied English Literature, Political Science, and Leadership in Public Policy and Service. At school she was an ultra popular RA, heavily involved in volunteerism (who’da guessed?), served as President of the Student Volunteer Bureau, and played goalie for the lacrosse team. After graduating, Christin joined Peace Corps Cambodia as an ETTT PCV and she has been here ever since.

During inquiries about her family, Christin wanted to talk about both her American family and her Khmer family. Her parents in America, she says, are awesome, hard-working people currently enjoying a well-deserved retirement and getting ready to move to northern Michigan. She also has one older brother and sister-in-law who, as she puts it, are waiting to produce nieces and nephews until she is Stateside under threats from our own PCVL. As for her Khmer family, Christin says she has been equally blessed; her parents learned how to make the best French fries at site for her, and her sister is one of her best friends in life. She didn’t indulge about her “awesome nieces and nephews” because she said that she will “gush your ear off about them all”.

When asked why she joined Peace Corps, Christin answered, “to become a better person.” “I wanted to be removed from my isolated bubble of homogeneity,” she says, “and experience difference in a way that cultivated a better understanding of universal humanness as opposed to labels of differentiation.” She adds, “Peace Corps offered me exactly the opportunity I was seeking: to travel, be challenged, to learn, to teach, and to serve. I stayed a third year with Peace Corps because I love what it stands for. Although Peace Corps may not always get it right, it tries and the potential for changed lives is endless…Plus, I just really love this country. I am amazed and humbled every day by the people I have met and by the development and change happening so quickly in a post-conflict society. “ When asked what she would like to see Peace Corps Cambodia accomplish, Christin answered, “To have all Volunteers who have ever served here to maintain at least one host country national relationship throughout the rest of their life. “

Now that’s a goal. Get to know Christin through some of her answers below.

Why would a Volunteer contact you?

I’m here for you. Anything you need: someone to talk to, help with a project, a link to different resources, whatever. I also coordinate staff development sessions and am working with the other PCVLs to start a Peace Corps Cambodia website.

What is a cool or interesting fact about yourself that you would like to share with Volunteers?

I was captain of my elementary school’s chess club, which won a trophy at the state tournament. I also played Parks Department Baseball for a few years as the only girl in the league. I was the catcher. My team, the Rangers, was runner up in the 1997 championship.

What is the coolest or most interesting thing you have learned about Khmer culture so far?

I’ve grown to love the communal aspect of Khmer family life. My family compound comes with two houses and 9 people. My parents took in their grandson from Takeo Province to ensure that he could attend school. My 16 year-old nephew takes responsibility for his 6 year-old cousin’s education. When my sister needs to go to work, there are at least 3 other people there to watch her baby. I’m a middle-class Midwesterner; I was taught the value of personal responsibility and never relying on others, so living in such an intra-reliant familial unit has been a new and rewarding experience for me.

Do you have a good Volunteer story you would like to share?

As I was preparing to move out of Svay Rieng Province, I spent a lot of time writing letters of appreciation in Khmer to the people who mattered most to me in my community. The letter I worked on the hardest was the letter to my host family. My last night at home, my mom, sister, and I sat outside talking for a long time and I gave them their gift. My mom asked my sister to read the letter aloud. As I listened, red with embarrassment, I was horrified to realize a rather tragic copying mistake. Where I had intended to write, ‘When you look back on our time together, please think about the good things and forget the bad things,’ I had forgotten a line in copying and written, ‘When you look back on our time together, please think about the bad things.’ Both my sister and my mom busted out laughing and still tease me about it. I offered to rewrite the whole letter to fix it, but they refused. As my mom put it, now, when they miss me and read the letter, they’ll laugh as well as cry.

Here’s hoping every Volunteer has such a great story to share. Thank you for your time, Christin! Volunteers can contact Christin through email, telephone, signing up for an all-boys baseball team, or just dropping by the Lod Cha cart in front of the office in the morning to see if she’s hungry.

Happy Independence Day!

November 11, 2013 - 70th Anniversary

Peace Corps Highlights

During my third year of Peace Corps service in Cambodia, the Kingdom of Wonder, I’m living apart from my host family of my first two years. Now, I live in the capital city Phnom Penh while my parents, sisters, brother-in-law, nieces, and nephews live a three-hour van ride away in Svay Rieng Province. My family has been the defining aspect of my time in Cambodia, and phone calls throughout the week are not enough the quench the loneliness I feel living apart from them. So I visit them as often as I can, which, sadly, isn’t often enough. Here are just some of highlights from this past weekend I got to spend with them:

* Cuddling with Chayna (6 years old) and Neath (2 years old) as we watched movie after movie. I think Chayna has watched Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs more than any other person.

* Helping Loem (16 years old) understand what was wrong with his facebook account and all of us laughing hysterically as we discovered that he was temporarily suspended from adding friends since he tried to add pretty girl after pretty girl to an excessive degree.

* My dad walking into the house after work yelling, ‘Hello!’ That was the first time I’ve ever heard him speak English.

* My sister and I gossiping about the men in the village.

* My mother demanding that I again sleep in the main room with everyone because my old room upstairs is too far away.

* Taking Chayna and Neath to the local pagoda by bicycle, me wearing an old motorbike helmet (per Peace Corps policy) and the kids sitting on the luggage rack in the back.

* Several of the teachers stopping by the house to take me and my sister out for soup.

* My aunts and uncles coming over for dinner. And bringing the beer.

* Having Neath follow me everywhere and even waiting outside the bathroom door because she would cry if I left her sight.

* Being sent home with more than 5 pounds of carrots and cucumbers because my mom doesn’t want me to worry about going to the Phnom Penh markets.

I live in a post conflict - post genocide - society.

The evidence of destruction and reconstruction are evident at every turn, from the interior administration to the physical landscape dichotomy of bomb-cratered rice fields and newly rising skyscrapers. Mostly, though, the history of Cambodia lies ever present in the skin of survivors.

I’ve talked with my host families about their personal history during the Khmer Rouge. Those talks are always my listening and trying to understand while my mother or father or aunt or neighbor tells a story that needs to be released, needs to be heard by someone - anyone.

Sometimes, though, I’m caught off guard. A statement so shocking, so painful, is given to me in passing conversation, and I simply don’t know how to respond. It’s not just my lack in language ability, it’s my lack as a human not knowing how to absorb and reflect and bear witness to pain so deep shown so freely. I’m afraid that I’m normalizing tragedy and horror.

Last night my neighbor’s aunt was visiting from California. She mentioned that she had come to honor and remember her father, who had died just a few days before Phnom Penh and the majority of Cambodia was liberated by the Vietnamese.

This morning my friend whom I spend every morning chatting with while I wait for my noodles to be cooked told me that he wish that he had been able to study English. Unfortunately, he said, he was 17 when Pol Pot came into power and abolished education. By the time schools resumed, he was too old to study.

I want them to know I’m trying to understand, trying to empathize, but my words are too few.

We wandered the garden in front of the Royal Palace, searching for the small tables marked by incense sticks. Finally, we stopped and asked a roadside cart seller: 'Do you know where we can find a fortune teller?' Serendipitously, we randomly asked a son of a fortune teller, who immediately explained that they all had gone in for the night but called his mother to ask her to meet us.

We waited at the food cart, loaded with Khmer snacks such as bird eggs, crickets, and tarantulas. My nerves jittered. I had asked to go to a fortune teller not to reveal a great mystery or solve a pressing problem; I simply wanted to experience something so imbedded in Cambodia's culture. But what if it turned out to be something other than what I expected? What if it turned out to be real?

The son got the call that she was ready, and he led us back to the house where the fortune tellers stayed. A woman was waiting for us, and she immediately inquired of Sambath what my language ability was. He assured her that she should be able to communicate directly with me but that he was able to translate if needed (it was needed).

She lay a rug on a small card table, smoothed it out carefully, and spritzed it with a layer of perfume. She then lit an incense stick, held it between her palms, and gave a short, silent prayer. We were ready to start.

Traditionally, fortune tellers in Cambodia are used for two main categories of questions: love and business. I was there to ask about my love life.

She passed me a deck of cards and asked me to shuffle it. Both she and Sambath chuckled at my Western shuffling technique and asked me to do it Asian-style, at which I am wholly unskilled, but I gave it my best attempts. Then it was time to cut the deck. I reached for it, naturally, with my right hand, and, since I touched the cards, we had to start over. So again I shuffled and again I cut the deck (properly with my left hand this time).

She dealt the cards out in a asterisk shape, turning only select cards face up, based on those cards, she made a statement about me which was quite accurate. She continued the process, pulling out more cards and making statements while asking clarification questions. I was permitted to probe and ask follow ups which resulted in various patterns of card dealing.

She told me that I have the potential to be a rich person and that I will soon encounter a type of promotion in my career. With sadness, though, after I pulled the King of Clubs three times in a row, she told me that in the next month I would encounter tragedy, and she implored me to pray to whatever god I pray to. When I told her I didn't hold to a religion, she suggested I turn back to Christianity or come back to her the next day to allow her to pray on my behalf. She said that in the next year I would have great success in my love life, so I inquired about my current boyfriend. She asked his birth year and declared that it shouldn't be because two dragons should not be together. He would hold me back from future riches. She apologized when she found out that my translator was my boyfriend, but she said she was only speaking the truth. She suggested that he go to her for a ceremony to make himself older by at least six months so that we would be different signs.

After about 20 minutes of various card drawing patterns and a two-person read in which Sambath's and my compatibility was tested (it again revealed his need to be at least a year older than me, but his own personal read was much better than mine, he drawing the hearts and me the clubs), we thanked her for her time, paid, and respectfully made our exit.

I won't make the return trip she requested to pray my upcoming tragedy away and Sambath won't perform a ceremony to add six months to his age, but that night's walk home from the riverside was a bit more quiet than usual. I understand why people would spend a small part of their salary each month to ask about what's coming, to get advice, and to have help to do anything and everything possible to make the future the best it could be.

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.