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.

A Cambodian Native: A Visionary Rebuilding His Country, One Child at a Time

Check out this interview with Sambath Meas of Countryside Class in Battambang Province, Cambodia, the organization I’ve been working very closely with.


You can also learn more about Countryside Class at http://countrysideclass.blogspot.com/

Youth Star Cambodia

Last Saturday was Youth Star Cambodia’s eighth annual fundraising gala dinner. This year’s theme honored the decade of the Roaring Twenties as ‘a decade symbolized by progress, innovation, liberation and prosperity. Youth Star’s Volunteers embody the characteristics of this time: they are change-makers bringing growth and development to the communities they work with.’ 

Thanks to the generosity of the USAID Director in Cambodia, I and a few other Peace Corps Volunteers were able to attend this event. We were all inspired by the vision and work of Youth Star, and we hope to work more closely with Youth Star in the future, learning from their methods and their dedicated Volunteers. 

Caitie, Kirk, and Jodi

Table 24 - arguably the most fun table at the gala

Youth Star was founded in 2005 by Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Eva Mysliwiec, and the mission and core values of Youth Star are actually quite similar to those of Peace Corps. Youth Star Cambodia sends young Cambodians to rural, impoverished areas to serve as Volunteers for a year, with the mission ‘to build a just and peaceful nation through citizen service, civic leadership, and social entrepreneurship. Our work is guided by the belief that building a just and peaceful nation is every citizen’s right and responsibility, and that each individual can make a difference.’

Youth Star Volunteers work closely with community leaders to achieve a community-directed development plan. Primarily, Youth Star Volunteers work with youth clubs, training up the next generation of leaders and empowering youth from disadvantaged situations. 

A Youth Star Volunteer leads a campaign for domestic-violence free communities through Cambodia’s Good Men Campaign (http://goodmencampaign.wordpress.com) (image from Youth Star’s website)

As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cambodia, every time I read about Youth Star programs and events I am in awe at how much they are able to accomplish compared to us American Volunteers. Youth Star Volunteers are here, in their own country, helping in communities where they know the language and the culture and the everyday dynamics. 

You can learn more about Youth Star Cambodia and their vision and work at their website: 

http://www.youthstarcambodia.org/

Chris, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer who just finished his two years of service in Cambodia, offered up an encouraging moment to the volunteers still in service:

I was on my way to the Province that shall not be named. Along the way I met a Khmer boy on his way to this place. He took up the opportunity to speak English with a foreigner and came and sat by me on the bus. I asked him where he was going and he said that he was going to volunteer in the province with some Japanese volunteers on his short time off from University. He then started to tell me about a certain English teacher that he had in high school that had inspired him to study at University and to volunteer. He told me about how great and inspiring he was and how he helped find scholarships and that he had been inspired to study Japanese.. strange advice from an English teacher, but it seems to have paid off. Anyway.. he went on and finally said that he was a Peace Corps volunteer and asked me if I knew what Peace Corps was.. I was blown away. I had no Peace Corps shirts or hats on and I was certainly not expecting to hear about Peace Corps while going to a forbidden province. I asked him who it was and how long he studied with the teacher and he said Teacher Brian and for 6 months. I couldn’t believe how big an impact a volunteer had after only 6 months of a class that was held only a couple days a week.

Sometimes in your two or three years here, you will or have asked yourself what kind of a difference you made in this country (I know I have sooo many times). It is definitely sometimes difficult to see, but every lesson, every semester, every outreach, every conversation has the potential to inspire people.. even if it’s just one person. Maybe it’s students, villagers, friends, co-workers, tutors or teachers. You may not even realize it and maybe you will never get the chance to see it personally, but you are making an impact in Cambodia.

Good Luck, K7s and K6es! Keep going out there and inspiring people.

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)

Breaking ground on the new bathroom at the health center in my village.

My aunt and uncle proudly showing off the new bathroom at the health center. Thanks to the anonymous donor who funded the entire project through Appropriate Projects, Water Charity!

(posted February 22, 2013)

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.*

Keep My Eyes to Serve, My Hands to Learn

I’ve spent a lot of time this past week considering this lyric from Mumford & Sons new album, Babel: ‘Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn (‘Below My Feet’).’ In my mind - and dreadful singing along - I kept wanting to switch the lines to read ‘Keep my hands to serve, my eyes to learn.’ But that misses the point that several sources have been trying to teach me over the past year, a point that I think can be summed up neatly by John Green:

‘The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention (‘The Fault in Our Stars’).’

This past year in Cambodia I’ve come to recognize that, for the most part, Peace Corps is made up of two types of people: the people who come to change things and the people who come to be changed. I fall into the latter category.

Perhaps my proclivity for passivity is based in a fear of doing (read: a fear of failure), but I don’t think so. I think we can get so caught up in doing that we fail to consider the meaning and impact of those actions. Beyond that, though, I think the simple action of observation is an underrated act of service. We want so much to provide a tangible service that we forget that listening and watching and learning are just as - if not more than - important.

Over the past few days, I’ve fallen into one (of many) slumps during my Peace Corps service in Cambodia. I’m wracked with the futility of my actions here and doubt that anything I do will carry on after I’m gone or if it will even remain a vague wisp of a memory. But that’s a fixation on my longing to make a mark on this world. Why can’t I be more intent on letting the world make its mark on me?

Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn.


(posted October 19, 2012)