Sylvia's Journal

Prateek left me a few books and magazines about Cambodia and Phnom Penh. I had barely time to look at them but this morning the magazine fell open on a page that invited me to dry a PP delicacy: balut, which is a fertilized duck egg with fetus. It has a picture that looks exactly as you would imagine such an egg to look like. I learn that it is, of course, a great source of protein and that the eggs come in sizes from small (17 to 18 days old), to medium (19 to 20 days) to large (21-23 days). It appears that most people like to eat the middle aged egg.

The driver showed up nearly 45 minutes too early yesterday morning, so I had to forgo trying a new breakfast. I had an energy bar instead, boring but handy. I take them along on my trip exactly for such emergencies. But when I arrived at the office everything was locked. It was one of those misunderstandings due to language. The driver’s English is better than my Khmer but that is easy and leaves much room for confusion. I was let in through the backdoor and waited for the rest of the team to arrive at the appointed time.

It was surprisingly busy on the road to the office on this Sunday morning at 7:30, as if it was a weekday rush. I asked the driver where all these people were going so early on their day off. “Family,” he said. I don’t think I’d like my family to show up at 7:30 on Sunday morning. I am told that the Khmer people get up early and go to bed early, a habit that remains from centuries of agrarian life.

We practiced some more facilitation in the morning, in Khmer, with me waiting for the group to show through thumbs up, sideways or down whether an explanation was OK or needed to be improved. It seems that slowly we are all converging on one meaning for one word or concept. Instead of a 10 minute explanation for one English word, we are now getting it in a couple of minutes and I take that to be a good sign. We have covered all the basic concepts and terminology and are ready to practice the exercises that go with them. This is how the facilitators are slowly easing to the front of the classroom.

I am discovering that the notes I want them to follow, and which they downloaded from the internet, copied and bound in thick tomes, are not quite what I thought them to be. In my demonstrations, what I say and the printed notes in front of them do not match. The interpreter catches me repeatedly. This creates some worry and confusion and extra work. Everything is taken very literal and I have to watch out what I say because my words are being copied and if I am imprecise, they copy my imprecise words.

Halfway through the morning Naomi, from ADRA headquarters, showed up, having flown in from Bangkok after two weeks in India. She’s been here before many years ago, as a solo traveler, rewarding herself for getting her PhD. She was also here last year seeding this new venture. I am excited about having a breakfast partner, even though she won’t be eating what I eat; she is a vegetarian and doesn’t like spicy food.

The office director and deputy took us out to lunch to the fluttering curtains place where I ate my first Cambodian lunch on Thursday. The place is right out of architectural digest, one of several restaurants created by an American-Thai couple, the Thai wife being the mastermind behind the décor. We had another one of these Southeast Asian dream lunches and I discovered Khmer curry.

In the afternoon there was more practice and I noticed that understanding and confidence is on the rise. We left the group to themselves while we held a meeting with our (my) hosts to clarify roles and expectations. When we returned to the meeting room we found a very engaged group of people doing what looks indeed like the exercise they have to do for real in a week’s time in the province. Of course I don’t understand a word of what they are saying and I rely on Leonard and the interpreter to tell me whether we are on course. It’s a leap of faith since Leonard knows the concepts but is from Indonesia and not a fluid Khmer speaker and the interpreter is Khmer but new to the material.

Naomi had been eating too much Asian food. She wanted pizza. I have had enough Italian for now and pizza is not on my wish list, so we parted ways. I went back to the Japanese restaurant to try the 5 course Kobe beef set which I saw prepared the other night. It costs about one fifth of a government official’s monthly salary I realized when I got the bill and for all that money it was a bit disappointing; more spectacular in preparation and look than in taste: two thin slices of Kobe beef wrapped around a green onion mixture, a small white fish, a few scallops in a buttery soy sauce, a small crayfish, a piece of tofu served under a thin slice of mystery vegetable and over a batch of golden needle mushrooms (Flammulina velutipes), miso soup, a few pieces of purple and yellow pickle, a bowl of fried rice, sweet bean ice cream, a liter of Angkor beer and countless cups of green tea. I abandoned my plans to work some more in the evening because I was too deeply into John Le Carre’s Congo novel (The Mission Song) to put it away.

Today is the last day before we go life in front of an audience of the ‘High Excellences,’ so reverently mentioned multiple times a day; I can’t wait.